It’s Sunday night, mom has to go to work in the early morning so my father and I are roaming around the backyard with a flashlight at three in the morning hiding plastic eggs filled with candy and cash, making little nests of eggs under trees and near the fence.  Those easy eggs are for my great niece nephew and it’s been understood by the older kids that for all intensive purposes, said eggs are invisible to them, and when Kayla and Kyle find thus said eggs the rest of the kids have better show awe and surprise.  Thus far, there have been three squad cars that have slowly drove past the house, flood lights shining in our eyes like deer in a field, but ultimately, they drive away without asking.  I have to force the urge to stop the car and ask how many flashlights they’ve chased in random backyards, but then I remember the weight in my hand, a paper bag with what started as thirty-six eggs of plastic fun.  With my eyes semi-adjusted, I see my dad dropping two eggs in the grill and shrugging.

                “How many have you got left?”  I asked him and he quickly responded

                “Seventeen and a half,” He smiles and holds up half a purple egg, “I haven’t got a clue where the other half went.”  I smile and contemplate maybe just throwing some of my eggs in the neighbor’s lawn, but that would reinvent a rather heated conversation between my father and Bill, a retired 3m engineer who isn’t very interested in kids trampling through his lawn, or for that matter, hitting hidden eggs with his twelve-thousand dollar John Deere, thus creating this surrealistic powdered tang-like dust as the blades tear through three candy necklaces.  That drama unfolded four years ago when I justified throwing two eggs over the fence.  We’re hiding seventy-two eggs this year, sixteen more eggs than last year because the twins are now old enough to egg hunt in the morning.  My father and I tried to negotiate possibly keeping the count at sixty-four instead because my nephew, Aaron had turned eighteen this year.  By Rahn Easter Law, he should have been ostracized from the hunting tradition and graduated to helping us older people with the setup of events.  He dodged the bullet this year and was allowed to be the oldest egg hunter in Rahn history, the rest of the men tried to shame him in giving up the namesake but he knows the truth.  The youngest in the group does the worst grunt work, Aaron would have to boil eggs that will later be colored, dice an impossible number of eggs for potato and egg salad, being sent on random last minute egg related shopping sprees for odds and ends that may have, or have not been accidently forgotten..  Aaron somehow had avoided being the 2009 official Easter egg whipping boy.  We’ve already decided to buy a large pink bunny suit for him next year.