Granny's Easter Eggs

When I was a little girl, I was amazed at my grandma's Easter eggs.  Their colors were so rich and vibrant that they almost looked painted.  Deep red, yellow, blue, and green, they were so unlike the eggs my sisters and I dyed each year.  Ours were pale, mottled things with our names scribbled in wax crayon on the shells, experimental drips of colors bleeding into each other as we tried in vain to make rainbow and tye-dyed eggs.  Don't get me wrong.  We had a lot of fun, each of us with our own dozen to do with as we pleased, but they never ended up looking like we imagined.

One year when I was a bit older, I asked Granny how she got her eggs to look so pretty.  She used plain old food coloring, she said, and let the eggs sit in the dye for 10 or 15 minutes at a time.  Ten or fifteen minutes?  My young brain couldn't imagine waiting that long!  Plus, with 36 eggs to dye, my sisters and I would be at it all day.  It would never happen.

When my own kids came along, they created the same eggs I did when I was little.  Who can wait 10 or 15 minutes for color when you are 6 years old and anxious to create the next beautiful egg?  Even when they got to be teenagers, they still enjoyed writing their names on the shells in that wax crayon and making two-toned eggs or double-dipped eggs.  We tried all of the Paas options over the years:  traditional, jewel tone, tye dye, sparkle, stickers.  Occasionally, we'd let the last 6 eggs sit in the dye for longer while we cleaned up the mess, and sometimes we got that deep color, but the Paas dye was not the same shade as Granny's food color eggs.

Last night, it was time to color our eggs.  Kyle and Claire are not around to help, and Emily was going out on a date and said for me to go ahead and do it.  It was a lonesome feeling dying eggs by myself.  I don't even eat them, but I felt like we had to at least have a dozen in the spirit of Easter.  I had not purchased a box of Paas dye yet, so I decided to do it my grandma's way with food coloring.  I also decided to let the eggs soak.

I thought about her working alone in her kitchen, getting ready to have the family over for Easter Sunday, while the eggs took on color in coffee mugs on her formica table.  I imagined her taking them out of the dye, wiping them down, and putting them back in the egg carton until Easter dinner.  I could see  them sitting in the bowl on the table amidst the ham sandwiches, potato salad, macaroni salad, deviled eggs, potato chips, and those green coconut topped cupcakes with the three little jelly beans in the center like colored eggs in grass. I thought about my aunts and uncles and cousins crowding in that tiny house enjoying a meal and each other.  It made me smile to remember all of us together.

So while my kids weren't with me to dye eggs for the first time in 23 years, I was still with family in my heart, and I made Granny's eggs just like she used to.