RIVER CITY JOURNAL: THIS EXPLAINS SHY AN EGG IS IN THE URN

Never underestimate the

power of a strong symbol

to last longer than you

could possibly imagine.

There is what appears to be a pastel Easter egg in the flower urn by the front door of where we live, which is on a downtown street with a certain downtown busy-ness of traffic powered both by gasoline and fast food. The egg, no doubt, was left not by a visiting bunny but by a French-fries-and-burger-fueled youngster who decided a hard-boiled egg wasn't worth the trouble.

The egg in the urn (sounds like the title of a children's bedtime story, doesn't it?) is much more colorful than the smaller ivory egg in another urn on the balcony above the sidewalk. This is where a pigeon couple tended two eggs last summer. One egg hatched. The other one didn't. The pigeons abandoned the nest, and we haven't had the heart to throw away the lonely unhatched egg, which has endured winter snows and spring hail.

From experience, we know not to mess with old eggs. We learned this when our older son came to visit from his home in Boston one Easter with two ornate eggs decorated in the Croatian style familiar to a housemate's Pennsylvania family. We displayed the eggs on the shelf of a bookcase and weren't the least bit concerned about their lasting power. Several years went by, and then one day we went into the family room and were greeted by the awfulest stench you can imagine.

It turns out one of the eggs had fallen from its perch. Pieces of shell with intricate and colorful designs were resting in a pool of foul liquid. Even the cat wouldn't go near it.

It takes a long time to get that particular smell out of a house, which may be why neither the pigeon egg nor the more recent Easter egg have drawn quick removal action. Besides, the pigeon egg is a reminder of the marvelous display of fidelity put on by those two birds as they worked to start a family. And the Easter egg is pretty, even if it is someone's trash. The egg is certainly much nicer than the empty beer bottles and cigarette butts that tend to wind up in the street-level urns.

The reminders of Eastertide are everywhere. The daffodils are blooming -- again -- in spite of the warm-cold weather pattern of recent days. A couple of pear trees are breaking out in soft, white flowers along Broadway. Hyacinths are showing their colors in small beds with southern exposures close to houses. Once again nature is showing off like a 5-year-old with a new box of crayons.

The eggs, though, hold something special within their fragile shells: new life and sustenance. Aren't these the very reasons we celebrate Easter?

This is why we will leave the eggs a little longer. If one breaks and creates a public nuisance, we will clean it up as quickly as possible. Promise. But for now we will leave them to mark the season that brings abundant sunshine to a world weary of winter's gloom.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.