Sunday Story: All My Eggs In One Basket
No recipe today. Instead, here’s a short story.
Mom cools the hard-boiled eggs in cold water while my sisters cover the kitchen table with newspaper. Dad locates the colouring packets and wire dippers Mom diligently saves each year. He straightens the bent ones and places them on the newspaper. There’s one for each of us, so I won’t need to wait my turn. I’m too busy removing the holes from the cardboard egg drying rack to notice who got out the mugs.
We put on smocks fashioned from Dad’s old dress shirts before dropping a colour tablet into the mug in front of us. I lean in so close Mom struggles to spoon in the vinegar. The tablet foams and fizzes as it dissolves into a colourful puddle. The bubbles draws me in, and seconds later the harsh smell of vinegar pushes me back. Water calms the jumpy tablet and my nerves. We can now begin.
I grab my dipper and balance an egg in its thin wire ring. I want to create an elaborate striped egg like my parents and older sister do. They layer the colours, holding the egg half-submerged in one colour, upending it and repeating the dip in a second. It requires patience and a steady hand. My father excels at this technique. His eggs have multiple stripes with clean lines. But my dipper is too flimsy and the urge to fidget too great. Inevitably, I surrender to gravity and my squirmy nature. The entire egg ends up in the mug. I shrug as if to say, “I meant to do that!” Leaving it to absorb the colour, I reach for another egg.
I have an idea of what I want to do, but never assume. The liquid in the mugs has a murky sameness. I can’t tell the blue from the purple or the yellow from the orange — until the egg emerges. Then it’s too late to change my mind.
The dyes are unforgiving tutors in colour theory. I learn the hard way that purple and yellow make a muddy brown. As do blue and orange. And green and red. How can so many vibrant combinations make the same dull non-colour? But, thanks to experimentation, I learn that if you leave a red egg in the yellow long enough, you will get an orange so blazing a daffodil trumpet would envy it .
When all the mugs are occupied, I reach for the wax crayon. If I can’t make stripes or create new colours, I can draw a design. I press too hard and crack the shell. When I drop the egg in the dye, it will stain the white inside. I am the reason Monday’s egg salad will look like a scrambled rainbow.
I try to transfer my egg to the cardboard drying tray with the dipper, like the instructions show. But my egg wobbles and falls. A fresh spiderweb of cracks forms. With my bare hand, I set the egg in the tray, staining my fingers in the process. I wipe the wet dye on the smock, hoping it won’t bleed through to my clothes. The dye from my traffic-cone-orange egg pools against the cardboard. It will leave a dark ring, the one perfect line in my whole collection. I will claim this was intentional.
By the time we’re done, the cardboard is wet and collapses under the weight of the eggs, someone has knocked over a mug — or two— of colour, everyone’s fingers are stained, and my smock is a riot of smears. Dad rolls up the soggy newspapers and disintegrated drying rack. Mom wipes the table. All evidence of the afternoon’s activities is erased, except for the coloured eggs.
Mom hands each sister a small basket to display our eggs. It’s easy to see which ones are mine. They are the gaudiest or the muddiest. Certainly not the prettiest. I know where all the cracks and dents are, even though I’ve covered the most obvious ones with stickers. Trying not to do more damage, I place my ramshackle collection in my basket and slide it towards Mom. She gently rearranges the eggs, rotating them to hide the breaks and expose the most attractive parts. As always, she downplays our flaws and focuses on our best features, small as they might be.