The Golden Easter Egg

 This story from my "Grandma's Stories" book is appropriate for this week.

The Golden Easter Egg

When I grew up, Kindergarten was not part of the public school system in Idaho.  If you wanted your child to attend Kindergarten, you had to pay for a private Kindergarten.  My mom put me in Mrs. Berry’s Kindergarten.  It was in a special separate structure built behind her home.  Mrs. Berry was kind and seemed old, but she probably wasn’t that old.  I don’t think we learned that much back then.  I remember learning colors (which I already knew) and maybe letters.  We had mats that we had to lay down on after snacks of chocolate milk and graham crackers.

Mrs. Berry had a fun playground that would never pass safety standards now.  Besides the usual swings and slide and teeter totter, there was an old car.  It was fun to get in that car and pretend we were on the road.  We took turns driving. 

Maybe my most vivid Kindergarten memory was at Easter time.  Mrs. Berry, before we came to school, had hidden Easter eggs all around the playground.  She explained that there were a lot of regular, colored eggs to find, but only one special, golden egg.  Whoever found the golden egg would get a special prize.  Oh, how I wanted to find that egg and win that prize.  When Mrs. Berry said, “Go!” we all ran out to the playground.  There were eggs hidden everywhere.  We all found a lot, but no one found the golden egg.  I was looking around the old car, and saw, deep down in the front of it- up below the dashboard, hidden very well, that golden egg.  I remember it was difficult to get to it.  I had to lay down, extending my body and arm to reach it.  But out I came, victorious!  I had found the golden egg!

I wish I could remember what the prize was.   I don’t.  But really the prize was finding that egg.  That was prize enough for me.  I was the winner of the golden Easter egg.