Sweet Sanity

Have you been having visions of colorful foil? Have you detected the aroma of coconut in the air? Have you been seeing rabbit tracks everywhere? Have you been drooling for no apparent reason?

No, you are not suffering from a serious mental disorder. Do not take a Xanax. Do not voluntarily commit yourself to the local psychiatric ward for a 90-day stay. Do not form a support group and invite everyone over to watch “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Don’t worry, these seemingly strange symptoms are normal this time of year, because Easter makes us all a little crazy.

Of course, we expect children to spool themselves into an all-out frenzy on Easter. They burst out of church as if they’d just escaped from an asylum, and it’s all we can do to snap a quick photo of them wearing their stiff Easter ties and flouncy Easter dresses, before they start running around like crazed maniacs in search of candy eggs.

Why, then, does this sweetest of holidays cause grown adults to go bonkers too? Believe it or not, our temporary lunacy is triggered by the same stimulus that affects our children — CANDY.

Considering that mature adults have highly developed impulse control, you might not think that sugary treats would make us lose our minds. But then, you’d be wrong.

It all starts when adults deprive themselves during Lent, declaring that they’ve given up chocolate, carbohydrates, or desserts. Forty days of that can turn even the most stable person stark raving mad. Then, we are faced with temptingly colorful displays of individually wrapped miniaturized candy bars in every store, which taunt and torture us in our self-induced sugar-starved state.

To add insult to injury, we have to purchase the candy for our kids, so we hide bags in our houses, under our beds and in our closets. No one can see it, but we know it’s there, calling to us like Sirens, “C’mon…. just open a little corner of the bag and take a few. No one will know. Chocolate tastes so good….”

We respond to these voices in our heads, waffling between resistance and bargaining: “Yea, I could just have one teensy-weensy marshmallow egg [staring into space with small drop of drool forming in corner of mouth] … No! [slapping hands over ears, squeezing eyes shut] … I can make it to Easter, just a few more days [breathing into a paper bag] … and then on Easter Sunday [eyes widening, grin forming] … I can sneak into the kids’ Easter baskets after they go to bed [drooling again]… and go … hog … wild [said in a frighteningly deep gravely voice.]”

As for me, I swore off carbohydrates several weeks ago, surviving on chicken, salads, and hard-boiled eggs. Our kids don’t know about the hidden combo bags of candy I bought from the commissary last week, but I certainly do. The tiny Milky Ways have been whispering to me at night from under our bed. I’m pretty sure the dog hears them too. I can’t stop muttering, “Gimme a break, gimme a break, break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar,” and I’ve developed an involuntary eye twitch.

Despite my fragile state, I will not give in to my urge to rip the secreted bags open and gobble the candy-coated catalysts, foil wrapping and all. I am an adult, after all.

However, on Easter Sunday, after the kids have opened every plastic egg, after the dog has ingested colored Easter grass, after the leftover ham has been sliced for sandwiches, after I give up washing the scalloped potato dish and let it soak in the sink, and after we snuggle up on the couch to watch Cecile B. DeMille’s “The Ten Commandments,” I will calmly open a bag of pastel peanut butter cups.

And there, in that sweet moment, I will reclaim my sanity.