The Full Suburban: Springtime is for fairies, leprechauns and bunnies
Every spring, a whole mess of fairies, magical woodland creatures and mischievous little Irishmen wearing knickerbockers and top hats seems to come out of the woodwork at the Ditto home.
The leprechauns are always the first to arrive, but their visit this March seemed especially cruel, as we were still reeling from the sucker punch of school being canceled indefinitely. But still, they came in the dead of night and made a mess of our house, throwing cushions off the couch, coloring our milk and toilet water green, and evading the leprechaun trap set by our three youngest sons.
When I was a child, leprechauns never behaved this way. As long as you wore green to school and ate Lucky Charms for breakfast, St. Patrick’s Day was considered a success. But I started noticing a shift when my two oldest kids came home one day from elementary school with the news that they had made leprechaun traps in class.
“What’s a leprechaun trap?” I asked, thus unwittingly opening the gate to the seventh circle of holiday hell.
“It’s to catch the leprechauns when they sneak into our house the night before St. Patrick’s Day,” one of them informed me.
“Oh, wow. They sneak in … and do what?” I prodded.
“They make a huge mess!” the other one excitedly chimed in. “They throw everyone’s coats on the floor and take the cushions off the couch!”
I bit my lip and looked around at our living room, which already looked like it had been visited by leprechauns. I’m pretty sure that night, I cleaned up the mess just so my kids would recognize the new and improved leprechaun mess the next morning. It’s every mom’s dream.
Our next magical visitor this spring was the Tooth Fairy, who came last week after one of my boys lost a tooth that had been loose for more than a week. Our Tooth Fairy doesn’t have the best track record, so we were all skeptical that she would even show up. Last year, this same son came downstairs in a foul mood one morning and announced that the Tooth Fairy had failed to arrive the night before.
His older sister piped up. “Don’t worry about it. Sometimes she comes late. One time, she left me a note saying that a whole hockey team had gotten their teeth knocked out the same night I lost my tooth, and that’s why she was late bringing me my dollar.”
Thankfully, this time the Tooth Fairy was not negligent of her duties. I guess with all the hockey teams practicing social distancing, she’s got more time on her hands.
And then this weekend, we’ll be visited by the Easter Bunny. Our family celebrates what we call “Fake Easter” and “Real Easter” because even though I love all the egg hunts and baskets and Easter Bunny brouhaha, I feel like it’s all just a sideshow to what Easter is really about. I try to separate the two as much as possible.
“Fake Easter” happens on Saturday morning when our kids wake up to find baskets and eggs hidden throughout our living room and yard. Chocolate abounds. Jelly beans rain from the sky. New neckties sit in anticipation waiting for the moment when they are found by a disappointed child who was hoping for a Lego set.
“Real Easter” comes on Sunday. The Easter Bunny has long since scampered back to her woodland dell, and our home is left calm, clean and focused on things that really matter. It’s the perfect way to end the deluge of eccentric spring visitors. Maybe the Easter Bunny could teach the leprechauns a thing or two about knowing when to take an exit.
Julia Ditto shares her life with her husband, six children and a random menagerie of farm animals in Spokane Valley. She can be reached at dittojulia@gmail.com.