Tag Archives: Easter

Advice for Easter Egg Hiders and Seekers

by Woody

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is available at Amazon (click here), other online retailers, and orderable at all bookshops.

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From Woody’s column archives, April of 2011…

Word to the wise from someone who learned the hard way: always, always, always triple count the Easter eggs before hiding them. An errant tally can result in the belief that all of the dyed eggs have been found only to discover, thanks to your complaining nose, one overlooked-too-well-hidden rotten hardboiled egg a few months later.

My second piece of advice for this coming Easter Sunday festivities is aimed not for adult egg hiders, but rather for little egg hunters. It is wisdom shared with me more than half-a-century ago by my two older brothers.

Growing up in the 1960s most everything my big bros did I wanted to do. I idolized them even more than I did Batman and Superman, no small thing considering I used to wear a bath towel pinned around my neck like a superhero cape to kindergarten.

In many ways, Jimmy and Doug were father figures to me. How to hold the laces just right and throw a football spiral, they taught me. How to shoot a basketball with backspin and block out for rebounds using your butt and elbows, they taught me.

How to ride a two-wheeler, they taught me that, too, taking turns running beside me holding the seat to help me balance until after a while—and without me realizing it—I was wobbling on my own down the sidewalk as they watched and cheered me on.

Around the block I continued, solo, but when I triumphantly came back around, Jimmy and Doug were gone. Mom had called us all inside for dinner. Unfortunately, my brothers had neglected to give me instructions on how to use the coaster brakes and stop. So around the block I went a second time, and a third, and still no one was waiting to help me safely stop without falling.

Falling, of course, is how I eventually braked and, knee scraped, broke into tears. It was not the first, nor last, time my brothers played a role in my waterworks. One memorable time was when they convinced me I had “upside-down ears.” My anguish was magnified because their description was pretty much on target. They even stuck ears wrong-side-up into Mr. Potato Head and declared it my new twin.

While Jimmy and Doug picked on me at times, they would not let anyone else get away with dong so. Indeed, I always knew they had my back in big ways and small. An example of the latter was the annual Easter Egg Hunt at our elementary school where the huge playground field was awash with Styrofoam eggs in rainbow colors plus a few rare golden ones that earned a special prize.

As you can imagine, when the whistle blew there was a mad dash and instant mayhem 20 strides from the starting line as youngsters greedily swarmed to gather up the first eggs they came to.

I would have joined this early feeding frenzy had Jimmy and Doug not coached me to race straight to the far fence, a hundred yards away, as fast as my 6-year-old legs would carry me because they knew from experience that was where the prize-winning eggs always lay. Sure enough, while other kids filled their baskets with way more bounty, I triumphantly—and annually—came back with a coveted Willy Wonka Golden Ticket egg.

So, kids, listen to my big brothers and sprint to the far end of your Easter egg hunts. The young me was certainly glad I didn’t let this sage advice go in one of my “upside-down ears” and out the other.

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Essay copyrights Woody Woodburn

Woody’s new novel “The Butterfly Tree” is now available in paperback and eBook at Amazon (click here), other online bookstores, and is orderable at all bookshops.

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Woody writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram at @woodywoodburn.

Rose Rises From Thomas’ Ashes

by Woody

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Rose Rises From Thomas Fire’s Ashes

 On its homeward voyage, the Apollo 11 capsule – like all spacecraft returning from a lunar visit – crossed an ethereal Rubicon where the moon’s gravitational attraction yielded imperceptibly to the pull of Earth’s gravity.

It seems to me there is a similar invisible line where the gravity of grief and loss is overcome by the pull of healing and happiness. The aftermath of the Thomas Fire, a heinous monster that claimed two lives and more than 700 homes and also turned a million collective photographs into ashes, has reinforced this thought.

For some property victims, this Rubicon of Healing was crossed the moment they safely escaped the fire’s destructive path. For others, it came when they returned to their ruins and uncovered a keepsake piece of jewelry or a treasured heirloom miraculously intact among the cinders.

For many, however, the Rubicon of Healing remains a point far off in the distance of their journey back from the dark side of the moon.

The Thomas Fire razed my childhood home in the wee hours of Dec. 5. Come dawn, however, I honestly felt I had bypassed the gravitational pull of overwhelming loss because all that truly mattered was that my father, who had lived in the house for 44 years, fled harm’s way.AudreyRoseHome

I was, it now seems obvious, in denial. More than being my dad’s house, it was my late mom’s dream home. She died 26 autumns past, come October, and yet the overpowering aura and warmth inside was still of her.

The living room, decorated in her favored blue, was of her. The kitchen, where she rolled out pasta by hand, was of her. The dining room, with her cherished Wedgewood china displayed in a hutch, was of her. Her piano, her books, on and on, her presence in every room.

Every room gone now, burned, cinders and soot.

Because I have the memories, I did not want to see the ashes. Alone among my family, I chose not to go see our home that was no longer there.

I made a similar choice half a century ago. I was two months shy of turning eight and Grandpa Ansel was the only grandparent I had known. I refused to join the procession walking by his open casket because I wanted to remember Grandpa as I had always seen him, alive not dead.

So, too, it was with my childhood home. I stayed away.

But the gravitational pull of loss did not stay away. Finally, the day after Easter, I returned. I drove high into the foothills of Ondulando, turned into a familiar cul-de-sac I no longer recognized, walked up a short driveway leading to where a two-story white house with a front balcony supported by square pillars once stood proudly.

Now, nothing. A moonscape. Even the cement foundation has been removed.

Actually, next to the “nothing” there is something. At the left side of the backyard, near where a hot tub had been, a round fire pit made of red brick remains.

In truth, it ceased being a fire pit a quarter-century back. The first spring following my mom’s death, my dad filled it with potting soil and planted a rose bush. Specifically, a light pink hybrid tea variety named after actress Audrey Hepburn and commonly called simply the “Audrey Rose.”

My mom’s name was Audrey.

In the fire pit-turned-planter on the day following Easter, in a vision filled with symbolism and metaphor, there it was rising from the ashes most literally: our Audrey Rose bush in full bloom.

The gravitational pull of healing took full hold.

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Woody Woodburn writes a weekly column for The Ventura County Star and can be contacted at WoodyWriter@gmail.com.

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