All Good Things Come to an End

A few days ago, I wrote about how we spent our Easter, and the not so traditional events we hold.  I realized however, that there was one tradition that came to an end.

After graduating college, my wife (girlfriend at the time) and I moved to Florida near to where her family lived.  I was quickly taken in as part of the family.  This was made clearly evident on my first Easter living in Florida.

I was quickly initiated into one of their long standing family traditions;  The Hiding of the Easter Baskets.  Growing up, my family always hid Easter Eggs to find, so I figured that finding an entire basket would be easy.  I was 22 at the time.  How hard could it be?  I was wrong.

Here is a sampling of some of the places Easter Baskets have been hidden over the years;

-Above the tiles of a drop ceiling.

-Inside a wetsuit hanging in the garage

- Inside the air conditioning vent

-Inside a suitcase, which was buried in a closet beneath 5 other suitcases.

It was my father-in-law (technically step-father-in-law, but that's too complicated), who took charge of the hiding of the baskets.  I honestly think that this was his favorite holiday of the year for the sole reason of tormenting his children (I mean that in a nice way), as they desperately look for their baskets.  He would sit back, relax, and laugh as we searched every nook and cranny of the house.

After a few years, he began to run out of hiding places for the baskets.  So did he stop?  No.  Instead of hiding baskets, he hide envelopes with our names on it.  Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a single white envelope in a 3500 square foot house?  I once found my envelope in the middle of a ream of printer paper.

Eventually that became too easy.  So then he began to hide "decoy" envelopes.  So instead of just the usual 5 envelopes, there would be 25.  Except that 20 of them were bogus.  He would still just sit back and laugh.

This Easter, for a variety of reasons, there was no Easter Basket search.  I am partly relieved, partly happy, and partly sad at the end of this tradition.  I am relieved, that at 29 years old, I do not have to crawl on my hands and knees and search under couches, in cabinets, and behind TV's searching for baskets and envelopes.  In a way it is sad that the tradition has ended, mostly because I know how much my father-in-law enjoys it.

I  hope that by next Easter, he might be able to hide the basket of his grandchild and revive the tradition.