Making the Magic Last

     Childhood. We all have one and it is always with us. It is at the back of our subconscious every single day. The events in our childhood affect us in everything we do. We all have many memories of all the things we have done, the good, the bad and sometimes the things in between that are neither good nor bad but just are. For instance, I can remember dressing up every Sunday morning to go to church with my mother and father. I remember having to put on these little white gloves that looked just like my mother's bigger gloves, a little beret which matched my coat. I must have done that for a long time when I was growing up because every Sunday I still feel the need to put on a pair of white gloves when I go to church I do not know why, especially at Easter.
     Easter was a big deal at my house while we were growing up. It was almost as much fun as Christmas. We always left out a plate of carrots for the Easter Bunny. Not knowing what the bunny liked to drink,we tried something different every year. Funny thing was he seemed to drink everything we put with the carrots. Each year we would get a basket with candy toys and cards in it. Every year a new dress, tights, shoes and a little coat or sweater. I really looked forward to that new outfit every year. My brother, who did not get  a dress, got a new suit with a tie, and shoes. Our coats were always big enough for us to use the following year for winter. I really looked forward to that new outfit every year. I am not going to lie, I liked the candy too. The baskets we kids (there were only the two of us) had on Easter morning were always guaranteed to make us squeal with delight upon waking and seeing them at the end of our beds.
     I remember one Easter we had just moved to Maine and to our new home in Orrington. My brother and I, still being young enough to believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and all such magical creatures, had decided to wait up for the nighttime visitor. We had each grabbed our blankets off our beds and had camped out under the big picture window in the living room. My brother had built what he thought was a most excellent bunny trap, complete with box, string, and stick and put it in the middle of the floor.. We had camouflaged ourselves by hiding behind the big orange lazy boy chair recliner and the matching lazy boy rocker that were in the living room. Rusty, had stationed himself behind the recliner on one side of the room, and I, behind the rocker on the other side. Rusty, who is without question the smarter one of the two of us, had figured out how to make a periscope of sorts from a cardboard tube and a couple of mirrors, and we were all settled in for the night with all of our 'surveillance equipment.' Every now and then sticking it up over the window sill of the picture window or the one other window in the room that faced the driveway. Mom and Dad had gone to bed what seemed like hours before, leaving us to our own devices. I am not sure how wise that was, but they had done it. We were whispering to each other trying to be quiet so the bunny would not hear us. Of course, the arguement about who got to work the periscope may have given us away at some point. My brother may have been smarter but sometimes he was not very bright(make two dummy). By and by we heard some rustling around outside the window in the snow. I do not know why but we got it in to our heads that it was a robber and not the Easter Bunny,( teach him to only make one). Never saw any two kids move so quickly to their bedrooms, jump in their beds, and pull the covers up over their heads. Well I do not know about my brother, but I was certainly under the covers. funny thing was, as I was almost asleep, I thought I heard whispering and some quiet laughter from my parents' bedroom and I wondered if maybe the Easter Bunny had made it. It was enough to send me off to the land of edible grass and chocolate peanut butter eggs for the night, comfy and secure in the knowledge that Mom and Dad were on patrol.
     Looking back I believe, maybe, Mom and Dad got tired of waiting for us to go to bed; so they were hurrying the process along without seeming to have anything at all to do with it. I am quite sure Dad sneaked out the back door, going around the house, crept up the driveway and scratched at the screen window a few times, then did it again, just for good measure. He then sneaked back into the house, waited a few minutes or so, probably about the time it took him to smoke a cigarette. That is all the time it would have taken for Russ and I to fall asleep at that point in the evening. I am not sure when I figured out what Dad had done, but all that sneaking around was most assuredly the reason I hung on to an extra year or two of believing in the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus. I remember waking up the next morning and there being a basket at the foot of my bed with a little candy in it ...AND A NECKLACE TOO! A new dress with tights and shoes, a new coat with matching hat, and a snowy white pair of gloves with a little matching handbag. Hearing my brother hooting in his bedroom, I figured he got something equally as nice.
     I have carried on the tradition of squeaking out an extra year or two of belief in holiday magic by allowing my kids to camp out under the Christmas Tree waiting for Santa, or sleeping in the living room next to the plate of carrots for the Easter Bunny. They in turn have carried on the traditions to my grandchildren. I caught my daughter buying bunny feet on sale last year after the season, and she said, "they are getting older Mom, I gotta do something or they will figure it out this year, I think." I paid for the feet. She is carrying on that same tradition started by accident so many decades ago, with the bright idea of waiting up to meet the Easter Bunny, making the children believe for just another year or maybe two, that there is magic and mystery in their world still, along with a new suit and tie or a new dress and tights, shoes, and a new coat that is just a little big with a little matching hat.