Just Dye the Eggs

By Laura Simon

I made it through seven Easters before I gave in.

For all seven Easters, I happily re-used the same heap of plastic eggs and willingly filled them, one-by-one, with a combination of coins, chocolate, and the occasional dollar bill. My husband hid them in the most ridiculous places, and we watched the kids scream and squeal as they opened their eggs and poured out (and consumed) their loot. One June, a neighbor kid found an egg nestled in the base of the tree in our backyard. Yes, I said June. Unfortunately, it was an egg I’d stuffed with chocolate, and the chocolate was considerably past caring at that point. That’s the thing about getting old: sometimes you forget where you hid the eggs.

Maybe you’re picking up on what I didn’t do for all seven years: I didn’t dye the eggs.

Growing up, the whole process of coloring eggs was easily my favorite part of Easter. But I was an only child and mostly inclined to follow directions that began with “be careful” and “gently.”  My own kids…all three of them…are not.

I’m not a “crafty” mom to begin with, and the prospect of combining my feral children with permanent food coloring just seemed like a really bad idea. I mean, there are better things to do with a Saturday.

But someone let the cat out of the bad. Someone told my children that dying Easter eggs is a THING. And of course, from that point on, they wanted nothing else.

I reluctantly added two kits to my online grocery cart and sighed. Even choosing the kit was difficult. I mean…there are approximately ten million different options. You can have marbled eggs, or stickers, or tye-dye, or wraps…or….oh, I don’t know. You can apparently even get dye that comes in plastic cups, ready to go. I spent whole, long minutes of my life poring over online descriptions, trying to figure out if I was choosing the right thing. I mean, in the scheme of things, at least online grocery shopping spared me an hour of scolding my kids in the actual store. I was grateful, but I was also overwhelmed.

I also added three extra-large painter’s drop cloths and a hazmat suit, but I reluctantly removed them when I realized that I have affordable and practical linoleum in my kitchen for a reason.

My kids were over the moon. I said, “Wait!” “Stop that!” “Slow down!” and “Gently!” about three thousand times. We dipped over a dozen eggs. Some people were impatient with the coloring process. Other people where delighted when their wax designs appeared after the eggs came out. It was actually not terrible.

In fact, it was fun.

We didn’t even get any dye on the walls. A hazmat suit would have been complete overkill.

The kids couldn’t wait to do it again. And I was glad I’d caved.

And in the end, it meant less candy for my sugar junkies, because when you hunt for real eggs, the only thing inside is potential egg salad.

All that to say, if you’re like me and you’re sitting on the fence about this potentially messy project, you should do it. This is not Pinterest. It’s Paas.

Dye the eggs. Have the fun.

Thank me later.

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