When I was a small boy, my mother’s ex-stepmother moved from Los Angeles to the town in northeast Oklahoma where my family lived.
For clarification purposes, I’m talking about my maternal grandfather’s second ex-wife.
Her name was Virginia and she was, by all accounts, a lady, which worked out pretty well considering my grandfather was somewhat of a ladies’ man, having been married and divorced at least three different times.
Miss Virginia was officially Ex-Wife No. Three.
She and my grandfather were married in 1950 and divorced exactly 10 years later in 1960 – per the terms of their pre-agreed-upon arrangement.
As strange as it might sound, it really was a business relationship more than a marriage.
My grandfather needed help managing the books of his grocery store and Virginia, the woman who lived in the house behind my grandparents, happened to be a bookkeeper.
His marriage to my grandmother was already falling apart and it was a convenient path for all parties.
Because she had no children of her own, Miss Virginia took my mother under her wing and when she retired from her L.A.-based office job in the early 1980s, she decided to move to Oklahoma to be near our family – which was the only family she really ever knew.
And thus began my annual love affair with her exquisite Easter baskets.
The baskets themselves were always very grand. To my six-year-old eyes, they appeared to be woven from some sort of exotic reed grown only on the western bank of some obscure Egyptian river.
Truth be known, they were probably from the dollar store.
Tucked inside the baskets were copious amounts of common, everyday plastic Easter grass loaded to the hilt with several pounds of those tiny Cadbury easter eggs - the football-shaped ones wrapped in shiny foil.
Layered carefully on top of those were assorted jellybeans, chocolate coins (again wrapped in foil), larger Cadbury eggs, mini Cadbury eggs, marshmallow bunnies, Reeses peanut butter eggs, pecan logs, and the pièce de résistance – the icing on the cake – a family of those oversized hollow chocolate bunnies.
It was like diabetes in a basket.
And it was wonderful.
As the youngest of four kids (and the youngest by a considerable margin), I was the only child in the family who received these baskets.
However, the always-considerate Miss Virginia always made a second, smaller basket that was for the adults to share. And honestly, I’m guessing she always made herself a smaller version of the same basket. She loved chocolate almost as much as I did.
Other than my mother’s “Miracle Cheesecake” that she made every year, the baskets were always the highlight of my Easter season.
And who could blame me?
I had no use for the Easter Bunny.
I had Miss Virginia.
As both Virginia and I got older, the baskets eventually came to a halt – but not until I made my way to college.
And even then, she always made sure I had a little something waiting for me when I saw her.
The big, ridiculously oversized baskets were ultimately replaced with a small, classy-looking milk chocolate bunny with a carefully-tied red ribbon wrapped around its little neck.
But the sentiment was always the same.
Virginia died in 2009 and although she has been gone for a decade of Easters, something tells me that she is kicked back in the clouds somewhere and enjoying herself a Cadbury egg.
Or two. Or maybe three.
Happy Easter, everyone.
Gustafson is the not-so-mild-mannered editor and publisher of The PineBelt NEWS.
