Easter Tissue Trackers

In our days of yore, Holy Week consisted of one week's stay at our Baguio rest house. It used to be the place to go in those days. With the unrelenting heat of summer bearing down on us, Baguio was the place to be. Mama and Papa would take us along with them to allow my parents a week's vacation away from us.

One Easter Sunday, We came home from our Baguio trip to find Mom all aflutter with excitement.

During those days, Easter Egg hunting was, as yet, not a popular activity. Holy Week in those days was a solemn, serious affair. It meant fasting and prayer, repentance and sacrifice. No fun was supposed to be had until Easter Sunday comes.

Anyway, Mom was all excited when we got back and she called us to our front yard. Our yard in those days was fairly pitiful. It was probably fifteen feet long and ten feet wide. It had a few scrawny bushes by the walls, a small leafy tree in the corner, and the lawn consisted of packed dirt and patches of very dry, very thirsty grass.

She said "Get everything that looks unusual."

I stood bewildered for a few seconds, not understanding what she meant, Jo Ann and Eric started running around in circles.

Mom started yelling "You're warm. Warm. Cold. Colder. Warm. Hot, Hot !! Burning!!!"

She eventually directed us to a scrap of tissue paper in one of the bushes. Jo Ann got to it first and she held it out , opened it, and found that the tissue paper fragment contained a twenty-five centavo coin.

The race was on...

We started spotting tissue paper bits all over the place and we just started running around like we were on speed.

After about thirty minutes, there were no more to be found.

Mom however told us that there was just one more piece. A Jackpot Prize, very carefully hidden and hard to find.

We continued to search high and low, rechecking all the bushes, and peering up at the branches of the leafy tree.

I finally found it. It was secreted underneath an upturned flower pot.

Behold the Jackpot!!! A five peso bill!!!

I was so happy it was pathetic.

It was the start of the annual Easter Hunt for the Reyes'.

We have had one every year since then.

Although, of course, we now use either real or plastic eggs for it.

That one Sunday, thankfully. was the first and last ever occurence of the Reyes-Children's Easter Tissue Tracker Contest.


In the Garden