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Alien Easter Eggs
“I don’t want to color eggs this year, Mom. It’s dumb,” my youngest told me. I looked down at her shaggy head and sighed. Janet, my eldest, was married with small children of her own. Timmy was off in college. Margo was working at Fred’s Department Store all Easter Break, and Sammy was at soccer camp. That left only seven-year-old Briana to dye eggs and giggle with, and she wasn’t into domestics. What would Easter be without colored eggs and a child who wanted to dye them with me?
“But Daddy loves colored eggs, Briana. Don’t you think we could make him a couple?” I asked, trying to catch her interest before she twisted away, to climb back up into her tree house where she’d spend the day reading.
“Oh, Mom,” she said, and I knew I was pushing too hard. I’d probably already lost her. Her mind was no doubt blasting off, returning to the stars where she held countless adventures with stray aliens and robots, zooming through the pages of Sci-Fi books. How could I compete with that?
And then it hit me. I just had to go to one of Briana’s far-off planets. I had to learn to speak Alien.
“You’re right,” I said. “Dyeing eggs does get dull when it’s the same every year. That’s why I thought this year I’d do it differently. I thought with your help, we could turn eggs into spacelings.”
Briana had reached the door. One hand was on the knob, the other was holding a fruit juice box and a sandwich, but she turned and looked at me.
“Spacelings?” she said, as if testing it in her mouth. “How would we do that?”
“Well, instead of an Easter Basket, we could make a spaceship, and each egg could represent a different species, a different planet. What do you think?”
Briana was studying my face as much as listening to the words. The silence lasted longer than the beating of my heart. It stopped and waited, wondering, hoping.
“Ok,” Briana said. “I’ll bite. How do we turn them into aliens?”
At least I was getting her full attention. I hadn’t had that in months. I took a breath and let it out slowly. “Well, we’d first probably want to dye the eggs unless we want plain old, white aliens…”
Briana took a step toward me, put down her drink, and bit into her sandwich. “No. Green and purple, and maybe blue. No yellow. But I could see some orange ones.”
“No yellow,” I agreed as I sat down with my elbows planted on the table. She joined me, scooting her juice closer. The sandwich once more melded with her mouth.
“I suppose we could use Q-tips for antennae, or pipe cleaners might work if we didn’t mind poking holes,” I began. “Super glue would probably hold them on. We could decorate their bodies, too, with connecting diamonds to look like space uniforms. Look,” I told her, getting excited myself, as I sketched an egg and skewed squares in a diamond pattern around it.
“Cool,” Briana said, with a mouth full of peanut butter and bread. “Maybe, we could put strange symbols inside those diamonds! We could invent alien hieroglyphics!”
I'd never heard a seven-year-old using words like that. Proudly, I smiled inside and leaned forward to study the sketches she was making.
“Cool,” I found myself saying when she was done. “What shall we do with the rest of the egg? Can you think of other patterns?”
We sat at the table for several minutes drawing ocean waves, plaids, elongated worms, triangles, pyramids, and lines. Then we sketched some alien creatures: an animal with a kangaroo body, deer antlers, and an elephant nose. We giggled and erased, and produced some more: crazy critters, mixtures of animals that Briana deemed “alien life forms”.
Finally, it was time for the egg dyeing. We soon had purple fingers and red elbows with streaks of vinegar-smelling dye dribbling down our sleeves and shirts. Briana looked like she was wearing war paint.
A little later, she pointed at my suddenly green cheek. “Wow! My mom’s an alien,” she laughed and smiled at me.
Sometimes awards come in the smallest packages. Her words warmed me with perfect contentment. I drew in a deep breath and floated on happiness.
Soon, the eggs were color-finished. We let them dry and turned to the spaceship. The old brown basket had no advance warning. The aluminum foil whipped out and covered it, lining its body against radiation. An upside-down strawberry basket filled in the space of the empty top. Then another, larger piece of foil joined the two together, leaving an opening so the alien eggs would be free to see through their clear, plastic space portals.
Briana ran off to get some scraps of construction paper. She came back with scissors and tape. I rummaged in my sewing kit and found silver and gold rickrack.
“Yes! This is so cool. I’m really glad you thought of it,” Briana said, and she hugged me, something she hadn’t done in a long, long time.
(Another keepsake to store in my trophy case; meanwhile, I held it close to my heart.)
For an hour, the two of us zigzagged and sketched. We white-crayoned and re-colored. We added construction paper noses, pipe cleaner antennae, and fake-grass hair. But two dozen aliens couldn’t fit into one bright, shiny spaceship. So Briana chose one for me to eat and one for her.
With a special treat of some cola on ice, we nibbled aliens, and Briana told me all about the book she was secretly writing.
Later, when the cola was gone and our eggs were each eaten, Briana pushed back her chair. “Thanks, Mom. Thanks for doing this,” she said before she ran outside to climb up in her tree.
I had dishes stacked in the sink, dye stains on the counter and floor, not to mention green alien cheeks, but I was smiling as I began to sing, “Fly me to the moon and let me live among the stars. . .”
("
Fly Me to the Moon," Bart Howard, 1954}
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