I realize that Easter is a big deal for a lot of people but, as an atheist, it’s a long weekend that has no special relevance beyond some fond memories of family gatherings, Easter egg hunts with fun (and sometimes challenging) clues that Mom and Dad set up for us, and dying eggs in brightly coloured liquids.
However, here’s a fun little story about the eggs in the image below…
Probably around 20 years ago, while I was in my PhD at UBC, I acquired a few dozen quail’s eggs from the quail research centre. The research was centred on genetics and, as a byproduct, they ended up with a lot of un-needed eggs, so they would sell them, along with other yummy things like regular hen’s eggs, and clumps of amazing basil from the UBC Farm, for pennies.
Mom had always wanted a little nest with eggs as a decoration and here were these fabulous little eggs, some blue like a robin’s egg, but most a beautiful cream colour that was speckled with chocolate brown. I thought it would be a fun gift to blow some for her and give them to her as a Christmas gift since we were travelling home that year and I could get them there safely.
I had never blown an egg. I recall my brother doing some when I was little, and Mom did an ostrich egg at his place years before.
Let me tell you…..blowing a quail’s egg is not the same as either of those. There is scale to consider here. You might think smaller would be easier, but you’d have it backwards.
I used a syringe needle to gently bore a hole in each end (I worked in a fish physiology lab, needles and syringes were not in short supply), put the egg up to my lips, and tried to blow the egg out into the sink.
I think my eyes probably bulged out of my head…and nothing came out of that egg….I broke it trying.
OK…I’m a scientist…and I had more eggs than I needed, this was going to take a little bit of experimentation.
I tried a few more, with slightly larger holes, and experienced similar failures accompanied by lightheadedness.
I looked at the syringe needle and thought….”…well….attach it to a syringe and suck instead of blow…?”
It worked!
Somewhere around the tenth egg I was sucking out of the shell (and flushing the empty shell out with water also using the syringe), my labmate from Japan, Kazumi, came into the lab. She stopped to see what I was doing and, when it registered, she assumed a facial expression of shock and horror.
Apparently quail’s eggs are a delicacy in Japan and here I was throwing away the good part.
I eventually managed to empty a couple of dozen shells and cleaned them up, let them dry, and then gifted them to Mom. She was thrilled with them.
Fast forward 12 years or so and I was cleaning out Mom’s house after her death and I came across them, carefully tucked into a box lined with crumpled tissue paper. Mom wasn’t terribly sentimental, everything had a lifespan and, once the novelty wore off of something, decorative items were passed on and new items of pleasure moved in, until they also lost their cachet. The eggs were no different in that they were taken off display….but they were apparently treasured enough to have been retained.
I tucked them back into their tissue paper nest and brought them home with me, but I packed them away somewhere and forgot about them, until I stumbled on them a few months ago when cleaning up boxes of “stuff” in the office since the office was in desperate need of renovating with the pandemic keeping me working from home.
I put them into a little bowl and smiled at the memories they brought, particularly on this weekend.
It was a mixed bag of weather this weekend, but enough that we got out for a couple of hikes and got off the main trails and the high number of walkers taking advantage of a dry period, and a bit of sun, on an Easter long weekend.
So I may be an atheist with no interest in the religious side of a holiday largely based on pagan beliefs appropriated by Christianity, but I can smile at the memories of the past and bathe in the beauty and tranquility that can be found in the forests steps from my home and wonder if a lovely little owl who shared my yard a couple of days before is peering down at me from the limbs above.
So I may be an atheist with no interest in the religious side of a holiday largely based on pagan beliefs appropriated by Christianity, but I can smile at the memories of the past and bathe in the beauty and tranquility that can be found in the forests steps from my home and wonder if a lovely little owl who shared my yard a couple of days before is peering down at me from the limbs above.
Happy Easter; regardless of your beliefs, or lack thereof, I hope it has been a good weekend.
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