Chocolate souvenirs

In a box in the basement, there are four baskets. Easter baskets. Each of my children has had their own basket since their first Easter. Always filled on Easter Morning with the usual fare: chocolate bunnies, Peeps, stuffed animals, trinkets and treasures.

The children are grown now. Well, almost. The only one left at home is the "baby" and she is 15.
I don't stay up late stuffing plastic eggs to be hunted the next day. I don't buy stuffed animals. No one wakes up at dawn ready to go outside to hunt for the basket left by the Easter Bunny. No one relishes the idea of chocolate before breakfast because for all I know they eat chocolate for breakfast - or cold pizza and leftover beer - every day. They are on their own, after all.

Last year I filled a big basket with all kinds of chocolate and candies and then let my children pick what they wanted to take away with them when they returned to their own homes or went back to school. I decided to do it again this year.

I woke up this morning to find my son asleep on the sofa. He'd slipped in in the wee hours without saying a word. While he slept around the corner of the doorway, I pressed a pot of coffee and filled the basket with chocolate eggs, gummies, licorice, toffee and milk chocolate bars from Iceland. It was all hand-carried on the plane and tenderly transported home.

To me, there is great significance in the basket on the table today. It marks the changes in the way we live. They make their way home to me and I welcome them with souvenirs of places I wandered off to while they were gone.