Easter Eggs

Does anyone know how this whole thing even got started?  The coloring of eggs?

Decorating eggs, yes, I know there is some long-ago old-world-y thing that must have happened.  Faberge an all that.

But when did it go mass-market?  When did we put this craft into the hands of children?

***

We were always a Paas family when I was a child.  One wire dipper per box, one box bought each Easter.  We never managed to keep track of the dippers from year to year.

One time we figured out that white crayons work as well as the "magic" clear crayon in each box, and that let to much artistic innovation.

When did Paas first figure out the little tablets that dissolve in vinegar?  That must have been the year egg-coloring went Big.

***

You're probably wondering, "What kind of coloring other than the tablets?  Weren't we all Paas families?"

The answer is "no," The McKellars were not.  They did that other kind of thing. . .some sort of sandy dye is in the bag, you put the egg in and shake it around.  The egg comes out marbled.

They were a latest-and-greatest type family.  Every block had one, right?  When Atari was topped by Coleco, guess who had Coleco. 

I remember thinking, 'This egg-shaking stuff must be cool."

And it did make a beautiful effect.

Not too much skill required, though.  I notice that the shake-stuff is no longer around.

***

Mom always required that we dye an egg solid in each color.

This was unreasonable.  "I think they're the prettiest," she'd say.  She was right.  Is right.  A solid-colored egg is lovely.

But we're working with a limited supply of eggs here, Mom.  You can't make us waste 8 of them on solid-colors.

She could, though.  And she did. 

***

We did all the tricks we thought were our own ideas but then grew up to realize that everyone was working with the same bag of tools.

There was the dip-part-way, flip-over-to-dip-in-a-different-color.

There was the dip-it-in-gradually-so-the-color-would-dye-in-different-shades.

The this-isn't-working-out-like-I-thought-it-would-so-submerge-it-in-a-darker-color-to-cover-it-up-and-go-from-there.

The write-in-"magic"-crayon-and-dip-only-to-learn-that-your-writing-or-artist's-touch-is-not-great-when-you're-using-clear-crayon-on-a-white-egg-and-see-what-you're-doing.

My brother had a unique one once.  Genuinely unique:  He bit into it with his incisor and used a fine point felt tip point to write a monologue from the auctioneer who auctioned off this tooth-print.

But my brother didn't actually dye the egg, so I don't know that this counts.

***

Gramma Gemma came to Easter supper with a special collection one year:  Eggs that she had dyed in liquids like tea, and coffee and cranberry juice, and then etched with a knife.

Beautiful patterns of vines trailing around from top to bottom, another with diamonds striping the surface like a delicate, European harlequin. 

She had not blown them out.  Neither had she hard-boiled them.  I'm deducing this now, over 20 years later, because what I know is that we made little paper rings to hold them up and we set them on a shelf in our basement.

What?  We weren't going to eat them, for goodness sake!

Joshua's hard boiled egg from Cubbies last year found its way under our front passenger's seat and that began to stink about a month later.  So, hard boiled eggs go rotten and smell bad.

But Gramma's eggs couldn't have been hard boiled because they never started to stink.

They were not blown out because after about a year, we dared to pick one up and shake it.  A definite rattle from within.  Felt like a hard, small ball inside a sturdy shell. 

At first, we didn't want the eggs to fall off the shelf because we didn't want to destroy Gramma's artistry.  But eventually, the greater reason was that we feared the smell if one were ever broken.

Whatever happened to those eggs?. . .


***

We boiled 48 for coloring and after the kids did 18 each, they still would have been happy to color more.

(We eat a lot of hard-boiled egg whites, so there was method in that mad number.)


Bryan and I did some, too.  I, ever trying to make one really beautiful, but my plans never fleshing out, and Bryan, up to his standard M.O. in using his magic crayon (we have several from years past) to write things like "BPP (heart) ALP."

I did not require any solids. 

The biggest thrill, again, was combining the dyes after the eggs were done--a grand free-styling color-wheel. 

***

Josh asked, in the midst of his coloring, "What do we do with Easter eggs?"

We eat them.

He was appalled. 

When you're 5, and can't remember back to the time you dyed eggs at age 4, or 3, or 2, the whole idea of coloring eggs (eggs!) is too wonderful to ever dream of terminating in the act of eating them. 

But we saved the dipper, and now have 7 going into next Easter.