I was just thinking recently how much space holidays take up in your memory and the older you get, the more room you seem to need.

Easter is a perfect example.

Every year at this time, I wonder what a Gallup poll would discover if  it asked the following question of young children: Who is more important to you? Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, or the Tooth Fairy?

My money (no pun intended) is on good old St. Nick, with the Tooth Fairy edging out the Easter Bunny by about the size of a buck.

Remember when it would be more like the size of a quarter?

All of this came to my mind when I was reminded that the traditional Hillsboro Easter Egg Hunt will be held this Saturday, April 4 at Albert Field City Park.

The event begins at 2 p.m. and all children up to fifth grade are invited along with their parents, of course. After all, someone has to do the cheering when the hunt begins.

The event is sponsored by Hillsboro Lions Club members and the Firemen, who often seem to have more fun than some of the kids. They also have been known to assist the younger contestants who are a bit age-challenged for such a tough competition.

Funny, how in my memory, eggs seem to have played a bigger role than the bunny himself. After all, she wasn’t the one laying the eggs.

Things always started a day or two before Easter with coloring and decorating the eggs. Then came the great egg hunt, followed a day later by scrambled eggs at the traditional Easter breakfast before church.

Sort of makes you wonder why it wasn’t an Easter Chicken. Perhaps the bunny had a good lobbyist.

When I was a kid growing up in Chicago, back in the dark ages, we always went to my grandparents home after church for a family Easter celebration and dinner.

My wonderful, loving grandmother would always hide colored eggs for us to find on the first floor of the big house about a mile from ours.

They had a small wood-carved table in the living that was held up by a real cool bear cub that my brother and I always loved. It had a head that opened at the neck, and guess what was inside it every Easter without fail?

Grandma Em, being the kind soul she was, always used that favorite hiding place for three beautiful eggs, one for each grandchild. Of course, we were not allowed to look inside that bear cub until all the other eggs had been found, no matter how much we wanted to do that.

One year, when we all were getting a bit older, she did the unthinkable, and left it empty.

Somehow, the egg searchers got over the shock ...surprisingly with no tears.

For years I couldn’t think of childhood Easters without remembering that empty bear head. Now, I think much more about the cheerful, loving grandmother, who taught us, without even trying, that some things so permanent in our lives can one day become only a memory …like grandparents.

Happy Easter to all of you and your loved ones.