2008-01-24T06:41:00.000-08:00

1. 1969: All of the eggs got hidden on Grandma and Grandpa's roof and three of us ended up in the Emergency Room but only my cousin Gary got a cast out of the deal. Hiding eggs on the roof at Easter became Grandpa's greatest joy in life.

2. 1971: Grandpa finally uncovered his "homemade rum" which he'd been making in the basement for three years and all the grown-ups got food poisoning. And Gary did too.

3. 1972: My cousin Heather told me what sexual intercourse really was. For some reason, though I'd been told before, it sunk in, finally, that day. I was very upset. My "Growing Up Healthy!" book had said that a man and woman would have a "loving embrace" and a baby would be conceived and I was fine with that because I knew I'd never have a loving embrace with a boy but the sex thing sounded okay. And now I knew I could get a freaking baby out of it.

4. 1975: My cousin who'd converted to Judaism brought her husband and Grandpa kept saying things like, "Well I hope there's something besides ham because we got a Christ-killer here" and all of the parents packed us kids up and we came home.

5. 1979: My cousin Monica said, right at the table after grace, if I had considered I might be a lesbian since I couldn't keep a boyfriend. My cousin Gary snapped, "At least she's not a slut like you are!" and I said, "But I'm not a lesbian, either! I'm not!" but my parents got all hippie about it and said if I was a lesbian that was okay. Grandpa said like I wasn't there, "She doesn't look like a bull dyke, but you just never know."

I do not care what any consenting adults do, but for the record: I have never been with a woman nor have I had the desire.

6. 1981: We kids refused the Easter Egg Hunt because we were all in our late teens and early twenties but nobody had any little kids yet and Grandpa got furious and said, "Goddammit, get up on that roof and get the fucking eggs! Your grandmother went to a lot of work!"

We all knew Grandpa had done the roof thing, Grandma wasn't like that. Gary and I crawled up there and threw every fucking egg as far as we could. That part was okay.

7. 1984: I took my boyfriend to Easter and Monica was all over him. And she kept saying, "At least you're not like David, she brought David to Thanksgiving and we all just hated him and he was probably a transvestite anyway" and Grandpa said, "Shut up, Mona. Looks like we might get our little mouse married off here, let's not look a gift horse in the mouth" and my boyfriend whinnied like a horse and I knew right then and there that I would marry him. And I did.

8. 1985: The usual fighting at the table and during the Easter Egg Hunt; and for the first time ever, Grandma got spitting mad. She said she didn't give a damn because she had terminal cancer and would be gone before Thanksgiving.

We were absolutely paralyzed. Not one person there had known.

And sure enough, she died two days before Thanksgiving.

Grandma was wonderful but her timing was shitty.

9. 1990: Grandpa, now a little demented (as if he'd been okay before) took it upon himself to dress like "The Easter Bunny" for our kids, which we cousins now had about ten of, but the Easter Bunny costume was rented and he actually had a rat costume on and it was scarier than hell, he had these huge fangs and, for some reason, a gun that shot little plastic eggs and he opened fire on my child and the children of all my cousins and my husband said, "That's it. Fuck it. We're out of here" and we were. We still visited Grandpa a lot, but never on Easter.

10. 2003: Aunt Ginny called at six a.m. on Easter Morning to tell us Grandpa had died an hour ago of a stroke.

And I cried.

My Dysfunctional Family: 10 Terrible Easter Memories