a year ago

I love that my status updates from years past show up now on my wall. Seeing what struck me on "this day in history" makes for some great writing prompts! Last year on this date, my status was "Stephanie is very grateful that these peeps are the perfect stage of stale. So need that right now!" I don't know exactly what kind of a day I was having, but it must have been a rough one, and probably emotional. How do I know that? Because of the peep story.

We always had peeps in our Easter baskets. Always yellow chicks--the original peeps. For whatever reason, I always left them for last when eating my Easter candy.....well, almost last: I don't like jelly beans. It was years before I realized that peeps come out of the package squishy and mushy. I preferred eating the chocolate first, so it didn't get that powdery color, and the chocolate was so rich to me that I took my time. After we were married, I discovered two things: 1) that some people don't like peeps at all, and 2) that many people like their peeps fresh, not with a little bit of toothsomeness. I was amazed.

It took a while to get Guy to understand that I just liked them a little stale--maybe a week, on the outside. Then I went to work on the rest of the world. By then, we had moved away from family, and were celebrating Easter among strangers who had become friends. Unbelievably, none of them had ever even tried a stale (ripe?) peep! Some tried, many wouldn't, and very few enjoyed them. Each stale peep, though, still reminds me of my childhood--holidays with Grammy and Grampy, Gramma Katie, Aunt Alice, even Mrs. Ettenberger. Holidays when I was too young to really pay close attention to what the grown-ups were talking about, but too old to go play somewhere else. I was always underfoot (sometimes literally, after dinner was over and they sat at the table having coffee while I crawled around on the floor under the table), and always waiting for just the right moment to celebrate my holiday spoils.

One Easter not long before Dad died, we went to visit for the weekend. When we arrived, Dad pulled out a package of peeps. It hadn't yet been touched, except for the wrapper. It was torn. I looked at Dad and asked what had happened to it. He smiled and said, "I wanted to make sure they were ready for Easter." They were, in fact, exactly the perfect stage of stale. I so needed that right then.

The peeps from last year had been sent in a package from my oldest brother. He'd heard the peep story, and when he and his wife saw the peeps on the shelf at the store, had to send them. There was another time when he was going to visit, so he bought peeps, opened them a tiny bit, and put them on the rear dash of his car so they would 'ripen' before we saw each other. In all these peep exchanges, I've learned that the yellow peeps stale the best, the purple and blue ones never really get stale at all, and the chicks are the best; peppermint star peeps are just not right, except in cocoa, and chocolate covered peeps are an entirely different confection, not to be compared to, or treated like any other peeps.

Like so many other things, peeps make me cry--or, at the very least, tear up, and I would have it no other way. I love my memories being so close to the surface, and I love that the smallest, oddest things can bring them to the surface.

mmmmmm, Lumps in my Farina......