Chocoholics anonymous.

An Easter story.

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You’d think that having the gold-covered, world-famous chocolatiers at Lindt for neighbours, German Easter traditions would involve oodles and oodles of chocolate. Not just eggs and bunnies, whole fountains and rivers of the stuff that I could float upon in the springtime sunshine. Just me? Despite the, yes, red collar touting Lindt bunnies that line the shelves (in very many more flavours than one finds in South Africa, just by the way) and an assortment of other chocolate bunnies of inferior quality, precious few of them hop over into the cupboards of the Germans I know.

Before they downsized, my maternal grandparents lived in a house in Tableview with a lovely, sprawling garden. For the uninitiated, Tableview is a suburb of Cape Town about five minutes away from Blouberg Beach and has a view of Table Mountain. In the early 2000s, when I was a tot, this garden would be transformed each Easter. My grandparents would host a lunch on Easter Sunday after church and once everyone had arrived, and kissed and hugged hello, the adults sat down at the large outdoor table on the patio to catch up with one another, while my second cousins and I (my first cousins did not yet exist at the time) would amuse ourselves by jumping in the pool or watching cartoons. Somewhere after lunch, which would have been a braai, the kids would be herded inside under the pretence of helping Granny in the kitchen or some such, and Grandpa would hide the eggs. Now, I have come to understand that the kind of eggs that were hidden each year are something of a South African delicacy. A yellow and white marshmallow simulating the yolk and white of an egg is covered in chocolate and then individually packaged in a colourful plastic wrapper, making them the perfect item to hide in the garden without compromising the edibility of the snack.

Once the eggs were hidden, my grandpa would rustle about the house and bring all the children into the garden where he would establish the rules of the hunt. There were thirty-six marshmallow eggs (a whole boxful) hidden all over the garden and a wicker basket on the porch. The three kids had to run around the garden looking for eggs and bring them back to the basket. Only once all of the eggs were found, could we eat any. Some eggs were gimmes, lying under a bush or on a windowsill. Others were tricky—a marshmallow with a blue wrapper hidden in a small blue plant pot in a far corner of the garden. Others, still, were downright dastardly—I found an egg inside the postbox one year! Some years the eggs had been too well hidden and they would crop up months or even years later when the trees lost their leaves in winter. After finding as many eggs as possible and pooling them all in the basket as per Grandpa’s instructions, the eggs would be dished out. The boys would take turns (probably running, again) handing the eggs out to the adults who wanted. We all hoped that they’d be satisfied with one or two eggs each so that we could split the rest. On top of the marshmallow eggs that we’d found, it was quite common for each of the children to receive a chocolate bunny or perhaps a little gift bag of assorted chocolates from the uncles and aunts. I’d sit in the back seat of the car as my mom drove us home, knowing that I was returning with a good few weeks worth of treats.

One thing that was decidedly missing from any of our family traditions, most of which focus on meat and chocolate, was painting or dying our eggs. We always had brown eggs in our house in Cape Town and I’m not even confident that white chicken eggs are available in South Africa, but they’re about all you see here in Germany. My parents just so happened to be visiting Germany over Easter last year and the three of us joined in on the traditions celebrated in my girlfriend’s household. My girlfriend, her parents, my parents, and I all sat at the kitchen table in Cologne and covered eggs with wax patterns before dying and boiling them. All the while we chatted and joked and my mom and I nibbled as much chocolate as was polite. This year Mom and Dad won’t be here to partake in the new traditions slowly incorporating themselves into my life. They’ll be home with Granny and Grandpa and the uncles and aunts, chatting about the change in weather and how it’s so lovely that things are finally cooling down, while I’ll be basking in the sun with the other Europeans, grateful for the first warm days in months.

Since Easter last year, my girlfriend’s grandfather has passed away. This year we’ll be at his house in the countryside on Easter Sunday. He’s got a lovely big garden that my girlfriend and her family are pouring a lot of love and a healthy handful of seedlings into. I hope to braai for everyone and bring a little bit of home with me, even if it’s not in the shape of marshmallow eggs or Mom and Dad.

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Happy Easter everyone! I hope you get a chance to slow down and spend time with the people who love you most (and their chocolate).

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Now that I think of it, I don’t know that Grandpa hid all the eggs himself. In fact, all of those eggs that got stuck up trees and lost inside hedges for years have my dad’s and uncle’s fingerprints all over them … If you enjoyed this journal, please subscribe.