Today my husband made one of his favorite breakfasts: British sausages, British bacon, and… well…American eggs. For lunch he will probably have an English Cheddar cheese sandwich. I, on the other hand, will probably be happy with a piece of Edam cheese on brown bread while sitting in my kitchen surrounded by my Delft Blue collection. My mother will doubtless enjoy much the same as me, only she will eat bread and cheese while gazing at a chocolate chicken. Yup. You read that right. A chocolate chicken sitting on a nest of Easter eggs. 

The reason for all of this? Childhood. My husband lived in England until he was 37. I was raised in many places, but by Dutch parents. My wonderful mother lived in the Netherlands until she was 22, but her mother was from Germany. Where, I am told, Easter comes with chocolate chickens. After all, bunnies don’t lay eggs.

As a result, for many years now, Mom has searched (in vain) for chocolate chickens. She even got so desperate that she ordered a chicken mold to make her own. It didn’t work. Then came Lidl. A German grocery store right here in the good old USA. I found and purchased a chocolate chicken, and the rest is history.

The chicken got me thinking about how very important childhood is. Although my mother experienced WWII as a child, her parents loved her and she grew up relatively normal. The good things of her childhood have traveled with her through life. Although my parents faced the struggles that immigrants face when they moved to first Canada and then the USA, they love me and I grew up relatively normal. The good things of my childhood have traveled with me through life. 

Although Richard and I were challenged by cultural issues that resulted from a reserved British man marrying a Dutch heritage woman who says whatever she thinks, we love our children and I think they are relatively normal. My daughter just bought British Easter eggs and my birth sons enjoy English sausages, so I suspect that the good things of their childhoods have traveled with them through life. Now two of the children are raising their own—our amazing grandchildren. My prayer is that they, too, will look back fondly at their childhoods and that they will carry the cheese and the chocolate chickens with them.