I’m as sure as “eggs is eggs” that my first ever memory is of Easter.
I’m no spring chicken, but I can vividly recollect being a very happy bunny when surrounded by a mountain of chocolate eggs aged 17 months.
My mother Rosaleen had a good chuckle about it when we recently chewed the fat about my childhood memories.
She reminded me that there’s photographic evidence to back it up.
It’s a blurry photo of me appearing all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with at least eight eggs.
My toddler clothes mightn’t look all that fashionable now, but the gift boxes that the eggs came in look pretty similar to the ones still being sold – except they’ve been dramatically shrunk.
It’s no yolking matter how some Easter eggs are 9.7% smaller than ones sold in 2019. And that’s on top of a seven per cent fall in weight between 2018 and 2019.
No wonder everybody around me looked broad in the beam in the good old days. They’d probably been nibbling too much on supersized chocolate eggs.
In my greedy little eyes those wondrous glittering yokes looked the size of beach balls.
My mam was in the maternity hospital when that photo was taken, having given birth to my brother Keith on Good Friday in 1975.
She’d left strict instructions that I was to only get one egg.
On seeing the photograph the other day she laughingly recalled, “While I was in the Coombe, the rest of the family kept assuring me you’d only get a small bite.”
Meanwhile, back at the ranch there were a half dozen doting relatives swooning over me.
I can just imagine them cooing like little birdies all feeding me with too much milk chocolate.
My late father Gerry was walking on eggshells for months afterwards out of fear my mam would find the snapshot.
He must have looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights when the chicken finally came home to roost.
No doubt my mam was hopping mad at the time, but such hilarious memories will always be amongst the first to warm the cockles of one’s heart long after your children fly the coop.
My mam was so much like a hen with her chick that she also forbade us from attending the St Patrick’s Day parade.
She dreaded the thought of running around like a headless chicken if any of us four kids ended up lost in the crowd. That said, this was yet another directive not obeyed by my dad and grandparents.
Even as a kid I knew there was one golden rule if you didn’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden egg – keep your beak shut.
Otherwise my doting grandparents, who’d been fattening me up behind my mam’s back, would have ended up with egg on their face for telling porkie pies.
I just wish I’d realised far sooner that the egg timer of life runs out of sand just as quick as the one granny used for cooking our soft-boiled eggs.
Worse still, you can’t flip it over and start all over again.My big regret is not cracking on with making important life decisions much sooner.
While you must never count your chickens, there is no time like the present to bet the farm on lifelong goals.
Because if the resurrection of Jesus Christ teaches us anything, it is that we mere mortals only get one spin on this merry-go-round called planet Earth.
Just keep squeezing every last drop of happiness out of occasions like Easter.
Life can be egg-tastic if you keep a glass half-full attitude.
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