She did not find someone else to bother, because we were the bother. The holidays were the worst. I do not fully understand it, but every single holiday seemed to set her off worse than normal. Fourth of July, the kids had little sparklers in the backyard, the dollar-store kind, and she called the non-emergency line on us, claiming we were discharging fireworks. It was sparklers. We had to explain to a very bored cop that no, there were no fireworks. It was just three kids waving sparklers their mom was holding the lighter for. Halloween, she complained that our decorations were frightening and asked the board to make us take them down. We had a plastic skeleton. One plastic skeleton, sitting in a lawn chair. By the time spring rolled around, we were honestly exhausted. Every weekend felt like we were waiting for the other shoe to drop. My wife actually started checking out the back window before she let the kids outside, to see if Doris’s blinds were open, because if they were, that meant she was home and watching. That is not how a house is supposed to feel. That is how a prison feels. We talked more than once about whether buying here had been a mistake.
Which brings me to Easter.
The kids were so excited about Easter this year. We did the whole thing. We dyed eggs at the kitchen table the night before and made a huge mess. The older two argued about whose egg was the prettiest, while the youngest dunked his hand straight into the cup of blue dye and walked around looking like a Smurf for two days. It was great. It was exactly the kind of thing we had wanted when we bought the house. My wife and I stayed up after they went to bed, hiding plastic eggs all over the backyard, behind the planters, in the little fork of the tree, balanced on top of the fence posts. We hid a ton of them. We went a little overboard. There was candy in some of them, little toys in others, and we had gotten these special golden eggs that had dollar bills folded up inside, which the kids did not even know about. Finding one was going to be a big deal.
Easter morning, the kids found their baskets, did the whole thing, and then we told them the yard was full of hidden eggs. You would have thought we had told them we were going to Disneyland. They were vibrating. We let them tear into the backyard and start hunting while my wife and I went into the kitchen to get the food going, because we were having a little family lunch. There was a ham in the oven and a whole spread to put together. Here is the part that matters. We were in the kitchen. The kitchen window looks out over the backyard, so we could see them through the glass the whole time. The three little maniacs sprinting around the yard, shrieking every time they found an egg. They were having the best morning of their lives. This went on for maybe twenty minutes. My wife was on the deviled eggs. I was carving. We were both half watching the kids and laughing at them through the window. At one point my middle kid found one of the golden eggs, and the scream of joy was loud enough that we heard it clearly through the closed window, and both of us cracked up.