By the time you’re reading this, the Easter Bunny will have finished work for the night. The carrots we left out for the rascally rabbit will have been consumed and the baskets distributed. Last week I asked some folks what they were hoping the bunny would leave them, and these were their answers. My fingers are crossed that they got what they wanted … most of the time, anyway.
• Patrick Clow, all purpose community theater aficionado. “A Havahart trap. Gonna catch that rabbit one of these years and ask him the ultimate question: Are those little brown things really chocolate?”
• Emily Skinner, Tony-nominated Broadway actress. “My very pragmatic mother always gave us underwear and socks in our Easter baskets. I guess the idea was that springtime was the right time for new undergarments. But to this day, I remember being bewildered as a child when my basket had that stuff in it — and everyone else had delicious chocolate bunnies, brightly colored jelly beans, and lovely painted eggs of all varieties in theirs. Let’s just say I’m still paying for the therapy over that conundrum.”
• Aimee Diehl, copywriter at Human Capital Institute. “At the risk of sounding like a weirdo, I would like a whole bunch of cute, new underwear to start the spring and summer off fresh! (Now that I’m a grown-up, I can actually appreciate that sort of thing.)”
• Jennifer Chaloux, Army wife, fulltime student, and mother of two teens. “My husband back from deployment … and stale Peeps.”
• Geoffrey Gevalt, founder and director of the Young Writers Project. “A package of well-cured Yellow Peeps. Note to bunny: To properly cure Peeps, leave package, perforated, on top of the CRT terminal of a writer or a tube-driven RCA television in a house where everyone watches the soaps. Best eaten with Dr. Pepper, preferably warm, in a wide-mouth mug that allows for dipping.”
• Tanya Lee Stone, prolific author of books for young adults (most recently, “Almost Astronauts“). “Growing up Jewish in a primarily Christian town, I had Easter Basket Envy until college. One year my friends made me my very own Easter basket. I can still taste that first bite of solid chocolate rabbit ear. From then on, everything else was gravy. I got what I had always wanted in an Easter basket — people who cared about what I wanted and made a heartfelt attempt to deliver.”
• Ethan Dezotelle, volunteer board chair, Enosburg Food Shelf. “A kite. I never had a kite until I was nine and I got one in an Easter basket. Now whenever I see a kite flying, it screams ‘Springtime!’ If I got a kite in an Easter basket this year, I would weep tears of joy.”
• Kath Montstream, landscape painter. “A book of coupons good for one breakfast in bed with ‘the New York Times,’ one massage, and one you-don’t-have-to-pick-up-the-dog-doo-for-a-week.”
• Lisa Nagle, WVMT radio personality. “A hot tub … wait, how big is this basket? Oh yeah, also all the money in my 401K back.”
• Maura Campbell, playwright (most recently, “Dreamtime”). “A ticket to Portland, Ore. to see my grandson.”
• Robin Resnick Amodio, graphic designer. “Chickens. It would mean that my husband’s non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma was in remission and he felt well enough to restock the Chicken Palace — the chicken coop he rebuilt on our farm.”
• Kelly Kendall, actress, director, and teacher. “Serenity and a firm belief that everything is unfolding as it should.”
Happy Easter. Happy Passover. Peace.
(This column originally appeared in the Burlington Free Press on April 12, 2009.)
Jennifer, “stale Peeps” YES! My daughter and I love them that way, too.
Oh Geoffrey, you too, with the stale Peeps. I’ll have to try them with Dr. Pepper, as you advise.