In our home, whenever we had hard-boiled eggs, the kids always thought that it was just hilarious and maybe a little gross that I put mustard on mine. Never mind the fact that I always put mustard in egg salad sandwich filling or in devilled eggs. I suppose in that case the joke is on them if they choose to stay out of the kitchen during meal preparation. But to me, mustard and hard-boiled eggs go together just like strawberries and cream or Ritz Bits (cheese-filled) and Nutella. (Try it. I’m not wrong.)

            I have a pretty good idea how the mustard first got on my eggs in the first place: it has to do with Easter. Coming from a Ukrainian and Polish household, it was tradition on Easter Sunday morning to wake up to a breakfast of paska (egg bread), kobasa (good old garlic sausage) and, of course, hard-boiled eggs. All these tasty things had survived a trip to and from the church in a basket on Holy Saturday, where it had been blessed for our breakfast the next day. And nestled among the pussy willows nearly hidden from view would be an unobtrusive jar of mustard. Just a little bit, recently removed from an indelicate yellow French’s jar.

            Since it was breakfast and you didn’t want to overdo it for Easter dinner after church, a small plate was in order. The blob of mustard at the side was originally intended for the kobasa, I think. But with the bread, meat and egg placed so closely together on a saucer, the inevitable would happen: the egg, so round and slippery, would get a mustard bath. At any rate, since we had fasted the two days before (another tradition, but more spiritual than mustard on eggs), it didn’t really matter what was on those eggs before you scarfed them down. The wonderful thing was that it was really good. So good that, Easter or not, I still put some French’s on my hard-boiled eggs.

            This Easter breakfast is more of a tradition to me than the ham or turkey afterwards or even those one pound bunnies lurking around the house just begging for their ears to get gnawed off. This became painfully aware to me the first time that I had Easter away from home. At sixteen, I participated in a school trip to California and Mexico. In my excitement, I only gave fleeting thought to the fact I’d be away from home for the holiday. But once on the bus, I realized that my Easter was not going to be what it usually was. Some friends thought I was weird when I ordered oyster soup on Good Friday, but my conscience kept me from eating meat that day, knowing the rest of my family wasn’t. We arrived early enough at our destination that same day for my teacher-chaperone to find me a church service, especially since our travel plans would preclude me attending on Sunday. But I hadn’t solved my Easter breakfast dilemma yet. Did hotels in San Francisco carry kobasa on their menu?

            When I went to the dining area for a continental breakfast that Easter morning, I had made up my mind to just imagine my toast was paska and be happy with that. But I never had to do that. You see, in our small high school, we weren’t able to fill up our tour bus with enough students so our “Myrnam to Mexico” club opened up the rest of the bus to any senior citizens who wanted to accompany us. And that morning, when I greeted two of the Ukrainian ladies with the traditional Easter greeting, “Christ is Risen!”, they invited me to join them for their breakfast of paska and kobasa. Obviously, they had planned ahead and smuggled the stuff along in their suitcase. So, together that morning we enjoyed a transcontinental breakfast.

            There was no mustard on eggs that day, but hey, half a tradition can be better than nothing. And that was a great deal of comfort on my first Easter Sunday away from home.