BrandiBlog

As Easter approaches and I think about which traditions I’d like to start with my own child, it prompts me to think back on my own childhood.

When I was a kid, I both loved and dreaded Easter.  Same goes for the Tooth Fairy.  Why, you may ask?  Because of my dad.  He used to say that he was going to beat up the Easter Bunny.  And the Tooth Fairy, for that matter.  He would tell my brother and I that he was going to wait for these mythical creatures to show up at our house at night so he could beat them up.  Visions of the Easter Bunny with a blackened eye or the Tooth Fairy with broken wings would devastate me.  So I would cry myself to sleep at night, worrying about the fate of my poor, helpful potential friends.

My dad had no idea that I took his jokes literally.  He just thought he was being funny.  But for me, the threat of physical harm to someone who was coming to my house to bring me a little gift made me feel guilt and despair that no child should ever experience.  I would feel awful going through my Easter basket or putting the quarter that I found under my pillow in the morning into my piggy bank.  Like somehow my self-perceived selfishness had caused pain for someone else.

This self-deprecating thinking has filtered into many different arenas of my adult life.  I find that I often do without new things (glasses, clothes, beauty products, etc.) because somewhere, deep down inside, I don’t deserve such things.  Crazy, I know.  But I’ve become a master of doing without and have to ponder where this mindset came from.  Perhaps it’s from being raised without having much.  Perhaps it’s because for all of my adult life I’ve lived on very little money after choosing to go into the noble-yet-pathetically-paying field of teaching.  Or perhaps it’s because my dad said he was going to beat up the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy.

I had pretty much forgotten about all of this until yesterday when my dad said that he was going to beat up the Easter Bunny when he came to drop off Ryan’s basket this Sunday.  I almost went through the roof!  I hissed at my father, “Do NOT say that around Ryan!!!!”  He chuckled and looked at me like I was insane.  But I meant what I said—the last thing that I, as a parent, want for my child is to feel guilt for receiving childhood presents.  And it kills me to imagine that Ryan could grow up thinking he isn’t deserving of kindness from others.

So this year the Easter Bunny IS coming to our house with a basket for Ryan.  And there will be no mention of harm.  Childhood is short.  And I want my precious boy to not miss a single second of pure joy and innocence.  Thank you, Easter Bunny.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 18th, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Family, Holidays, Life, Motherhood, Teaching. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.