As many know, I taught kindergarten.  I brought in dozens of raw eggs into the classroom.  The goal was to make an Easter egg tree or two. Each child had an egg or four.  I poked holes on each end of each egg…64 and more of them.  I wiped each egg and showed the kids how to blow out the interior contents of theirs as they watched me turn pink to blow out the contents of my sample egg.

Lucky for me, I didn’t know that eggs were so tough to clean out.  The kids crushed many eggs trying to do this.  I had lots of cartons of eggs, though.  I could have called in a room mother or so.  However, my thinking was not clear.  A few kids managed to do this part of the process.  The rest just sat staring at their eggs.  I wore heels back in the day, and ran in them to assist the kids who missed the demonstration on blowing out contents of eggs.  I was a madwoman on a mission.  I blew out my brains as well as yolks.

Once finished, I panted:  “Do not break your eggs.”  I had a branch in a coffee can of sand, decorated for Easter.  This also required yards of ribbon, and gallons of glue, and oh, water color boxes, brushes and soup cans full of rinse water.  I used a marking pen to write the names of each of the sixty four kids on their eggs.

The theme was Easter with no religious information.  I asked around, and no one could tell me that the Easter bunny or Easter eggs were in the Bible.  The kids painted and painted these eggs.  The colors mixed into a muddy color of an unpaved road.  It did not matter.  I put a puddle of glue on the narrow end of each egg, and a yard of ribbon folded in half so they could eventually be tied on the branches of “the tree.”

All the tables were wet with egg juice, paint, glue, and water filled soup cans.  I had no trouble telling them that the eggs needed to dry.  We had “free play” time.  After the kids went home in the morning and afternoon, I had to stay after hours to tie the eggs onto the branches of our egg trees  I had no time to admire the trees  because I had an egg headache after blowing my addled brains out.  Cleaning up was a nightmare.

When the kids arrived the next day we all admired our egg trees.  I let them take their eggs home right before spring break.  Break is the key word here.  I had asked for empty egg cartons so I cut these into individual containers with a generous amount of tissue inside. Most made it home intact.

My husband of many Easters will not eat eggs in any form.  He saw me make our four kids mad each year with the creation of an egg tree at our house.  I see a branch outside in 34 degree weather and snow.  I am giving it a thought!  It may pass once again this year.  No basket of candy here, no ham, and all kids are grown.  I just took a deep breath and sighed.