Spring Inspires Crazy Imaginations

Decades ago, a student growing up in a clever family used his weekly spelling words to write a story that I still chuckle over. Each spring, I recollect his tale about the Easter Cow who unless offered tasty grasses would scare off the more traditional, egg-delivering rabbit. To prevent empty baskets at their house, this lad and his siblings would share tasty greens with their unique but never seen bovine. Over the years, my mind altered this ingenious family’s holiday rendition until I have my own version that includes greening pastures and newborn calves.

All it takes to trigger flowing creative juices is to drive slowly down a country road on a sunny day with windows rolled down. The sound of tires rotating over gravel soothes the spirit and fires up the right half of the brain, which according to some researchers is the random, intuitive, spontaneous side. Some might call it downright goofy. A few miles into wide open spaces occupied primarily by cows and my brain alters the end result of this former student’s assignment to create entirely new possibilities when it comes to Easter eggs.

Over time, his story evolved so that newly greened pastures dotted with tiny, newborn cows tucked into ovals turned into Easter eggs in my imagination. Despite the fact that most giant rabbit deliveries come in bright colors, gentle pastels, or wrapped foil, my story involves rust, brown, black, sometimes cream, and occasionally speckled orbs soaking up spring sunrays while their moms nibble tender, green shoots. Chocolate eggs are little brown bovines basking in golden heat. The only bunnies are neighboring cottontails and jackrabbits—no anthropomorphic rodents carrying straw baskets in my version.

Even though I know kids prefer Cadbury and speckled malted eggs combined with sugar-crusted marshmallow Peeps to celebrate the season, I love to cruise dirt roads and view gangly calves with unblemished noses and shiny eyes, bodies either rolled up in tight little balls or wobbling on spindly legs. My mom seconds my thought that this is the one time in the life of pasture-raised beef that they’re ever so clean.

If I’m lucky, I’ll see little burgers-to-be frolicking across fields with equally cute calves or impatiently butting mommas’ bags to bring down belly-filling milk. Equally enjoyable is watching huge mothers who aren’t nearly so clean and adorable as their babes caring so tenderly for their spring deliveries.

What I learned from my clever student was that I need not tie myself to traditional holiday stories. If it pleases me to drive across Kansas prairies under cotton ball filled blue skies imagining pastures polka-dotted with newborns posing as shiny ebony and russet Easter eggs then I should savor such moments.

This youngster’s story evolved once he shared it with me, so who knows how this wisp of fancy will inspire new traditions in someone else’s imagination. After all, the Easter Rabbit started somewhere. Maybe someday an egg delivering armadillo or noisy magpie will help kids celebrate spring.