We celebrate the candy part of Easter every year, and my kids have been completely focused on getting their loot for days and days. As it has drawn closer, candy madness has built to a fevered pitch. While we were at the lake yesterday swimming, my daughter said a couple of times, “I can’t wait for tomorrow.” Last night we watched what I think is the best part of Easter—the airing of the 10 Commandments. So, with visions of candy-bearing bunnies dancing in my head I went to bed (after Joshua led the Hebrews across the River Jordan).
I woke this morning remembering a dream I had in slumber. I dreamt that I WAS the Easter bunny. I got up at 4am, while my kids slept, and filled the baskets. I dreamt that I stumbled, groggy and still half asleep, into my wife’s closet and pulled down multiple target bags of candy and fake grass. In this dream, I was terrified that I would be discovered posing as the EB because of those damn crinkly bags. I can see in myself nervously peeking out the bedroom door to make sure no kids were stirring. I had to open boxes of candy and bags of fake grass, making a horrific noise. In this dream, I quietly slunk from the bedroom, past the kid’s room, to the living room where the candy altar (dining table) was prepared to receive EB’s gifts.
After leaving the baskets on that altar, I dreamt I returned to the bedroom to perform another task. It seems that in the dream, my wife had bought all the candy (without my knowledge of what it was and for which kid, etc.). She had bought single boxes of gobstopper eggs and mini blow pops, plus a single huge bag of plastic eggs. As I remembered this dream, I saw myself becoming increasingly paranoid that a kid would wake—as one inevitably does to go to the bathroom—and discover me pouring candy eggs onto the bed and stuffing them into plastic eggs. At one point, I remember dumping a dozen egg-shaped gobstoppers from the bed to the floor. Again, the racket filled me, in my dream, with fear. After filling the eggs, I dreamt that I brought them all into the dining room and family room and hid them for the kids to find.
In this Easter-inspired dream, I realized that I had to hide the boxes and bags that once held the treasure. In real life my daughter had asked me several times this week if I was the EB, so, in my dream, I knew she would search the entire house for evidence of my deception. I returned to the bedroom and stuffed all the boxes and bags into one target bag and crept to the kitchen. I stuffed the bag into the kitchen trash can, burying it under leftover food and coffee grounds. In my dream, I felt my daughter would notice the target bags on top of the trash if I didn’t hide them. I am still amazed at how real this dream seemed to me.
In my dream, I quietly retired after covering my bunny tracks. I don’t remember anything else until my son woke me at 6:45 this morning to ask if it was time to get up. I told him it was too early. A short 30 minutes later he was back and I told him to wake his sister. We all trundled into the dining room to find two baskets filled with candy and plastic eggs hidden throughout the family room and dining room. Then, as predicted in my dream, my daughter began to inspect the house. She called me to the bedroom to point out an egg-shaped piece of candy lying on the floor, once hidden by the covers hanging to the floor. Then later she brought me another egg found in the covers of the bed. I was as puzzled and amazed as my kids. I didn’t really fill those baskets and spill candy on the floor…it was a dream, wasn’t it?
