Easter was a fairly big deal when I was growing up. My family was a church-going family, and at least when I was very young, we had corsages and boutonnieres for Easter Sunday. The church usually did a Palm Sunday thing for which kids got to carry around palm (or I guess probably faux-palm) leaves. I think I recall that my sister and I usually got a new set of church clothes for Easter. And then of course there was the morning reveal of an Easter basket with chocolate bunnies, jelly beans, peeps, and assorted other candies that I would gorge myself on for a few days — plus the plastic grass that we’d find strands of for months to come. My parents would hide eggs overnight, so we’d start the morning with a little egg hunt, and I particularly remember that there was this one spot between the upper cushions of one of our love seats that they always hid an egg in. It was the perfect size and shape to hide an egg in. Usually we’d have a little stuffed animal or something to go along with our Easter basket.

My early Easters are fairly well documented in photographs, but the pictures taper off after my first few years. I don’t think we stopped doing the usual Easter routine after my very early years. Maybe the camera broke or we just lost photos at some point. At any rate, here are a few of my early Easter photos, presumably of interest only to any of my family who may run across this.

1977 – my first Easter.

Here I am in 1978. This is in the house I don’t remember — we built a new house when I was very young, some time after this year. I don’t remember the couch either, though I do remember the scuff-style slipper, which my mom wore many pairs of throughout her life. This is not the cutest or most flattering photo, but it’s surely the best of the batch of monstrous photos of me from this year.

This is me in 1979, rocking a sweet gut and a Lou-Ferrigno-as-The-Incredible-Hulk mop of hair. I’m in casual attire (rather than church formal wear) here and the pampas grass at bottom right tells me that this was my grandmother’s yard.

Here I am at four years old in 1981 with my grandfather, who must have died in the year or two after this, as my memories of him are few and fleeting.

I’m pretty dapper and maybe not a knock-out but also not entirely un-cute at five years old (if you discount the creepy teeth). This little stuffed bunny was a long-time favorite.