Happy Hunting

I've never much been into the Easter holiday. I was when I was little. It was then that my mom still put baskets out for us (I have three siblings) and I believed in the whole bunny idea. But as I grew, she stopped doing baskets and made us sit in church (I was raised Catholic...and I mean RAISED: Catholic grammar school and an all-girls Catholic high school) for what felt like a week in what was usually a too-girly dress for my liking.

But for the first time in about twenty years, I had a different feeling about Easter this year--thanks to Sabine.

It was ridiculously fun watching her hunt for eggs. She has never been so focused. She found more eggs than the other kids and wouldn't stop looking for them even after the hunt had ended. And she didn't even care about the fact that there was candy inside of the eggs. Long after the hunt, she stumbled across a pile of opened and empty plastic eggshells that the older kids had taken the candy from and discarded. Sabine thought she'd hit the jackpot. She started pointing and speaking Sabine (nobody else speaks this language so we have no idea what she was saying) and falling all over herself to put the brightly-colored shells in her basket as quickly as she could. Of course, there was no rush since no one else wanted them. But I didn't tell her that. I think she's smarter than anyone else. Because when you are old like me--or young like Sabine--you realize that in many cases, the hunt is way more fun than the find. The thrill is trying to get there...and the heart-pounding feeling and the hope and the lofty imagination of what it will be like when you do. Because when you're actually there, it's over or gets old quickly. It's another piece of candy and you've a stomachache from eating too much of it.