I was in the grocery store when I spotted a chocolate rabbit that unlocked a cache of memories. My late husband always made sure a delectable bunny was tucked into the greenery in my Easter basket, which overflowed with other sumptuous treats.  

The calendar of memories flipped backward in time, and it was Easter Sunday in Miami. My father was always the first one dressed, and he would then stand outside in a patch of shade, smoking a cigar and checking his watch.  

Inside, chaos prevailed with my mother applying multiple coats of spray to her hair, while my sister and I donned our fluffy dresses and patent leather shoes. We had already received our Easter baskets loaded with sweet surprises, but we couldn’t sample anything until after Mass. 

In the refrigerator were pans of my mom’s homemade manicotti covered in foil along with a large platter of Italian sausage. She had spent much of Holy Saturday cooking the individual crepes and filling them with ricotta mixed with eggs and parmesan cheese.  

“We’re going to be late!” my father bellowed, and we raced to the car in a whirl of pastel dresses and satin sashes. Once at Mass, we all crammed into a pew and inhaled the heady scent of incense and lilies. No one knew it, but I had tucked my chocolate rabbit away in my purse, so I could chomp off the ears on the way home.  

We were just little girls, my sister and I, so did we truly know what Easter was all about? Did we understand that Jesus had undergone a brutal beating and a horrific death? Did we grasp that he had actually died and been buried, and then returned to life? 

In fact, we did, because children more easily embrace the Gospels than adults who too often have hardened hearts. This is why the little ones are crucial to the tale of Jesus’ life.  

At a time when children stood on the lowest rung of society, Jesus promised them the kingdom, while warning that adults needed a change of heart to get there. The beatitudes in many ways describe a child—meek, clean of heart and poor in spirit. How appropriate that when Jesus rode into Jerusalem, flocks of children called out, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” 

When my goddaughter was a little girl decked out in a ruffled Easter dress, we paused before a crucifix in church. “The bad guys did that,” she told me. 

She was right because even the smallest child knows bad guys make the innocent suffer. To a child it makes perfect sense that there must be another realm, where good guys triumph and villains get their comeuppance. 

And this may explain why children relish fairy tales in which dragons are vanquished by valiant warriors. Tales that end with a prince and princess “living happily ever after.” The Easter story has the ultimate happy ending that every heart desires. The one who was bruised and battered shrugs off the burial linens and emerges from the tomb. 

Jesus said, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me.” He said truths that remain hidden to the wise and learned are revealed to children.  

In my Miami childhood, chocolates were a big part of Easter, but my sister and I understood the deeper secret that explained the cries of alleluia thundering throughout the church. We knew that Jesus’ story had a happy ending, and so would ours. 

And, yes, I did bite off the ears of my chocolate bunny on the way home. Although I didn’t know it then, for the rest of my life, the sight of chocolate bunnies would unleash a glorious stream of memories bespeaking the joy of Easter and the promise of living happily ever after.