Owen, Meera, Kyle before church this morning, in the parking lot of Trinity Lutheran Church, Worcester Massachusetts
We just got home from a 5-day whirlwind trip through New England with major stops in Boston, Maine, New Hampshire, and Worcester. The highlight (and main point of the trip) was meeting our new cousin/nephew (post on that someday soon). Right now it is 10:32, the bambinos are asleep, the car is unpacked, 3 easter baskets full of goodies are sprawled out on the table, there is a mountain of laundry to do, Braydon and I are deliriously exhausted from a long Easter Day, and I am so grateful for so many things.
One of the many things I’m grateful for today is our Easter Sunday tradition. I have gone to Trinity Lutheran Church in Worcester, Massachusetts for church on Easter Sunday morning every Easter that I can remember of my entire life with only two exceptions (my junior year of college, when I was in Chile, on study abroad; and the year Braydon and I lived in Charleston, SC and I couldn’t afford to fly home). I think there were a couple of Easter Sundays early in my childhood that we spent at my mom’s parents’, but I don’t actually remember those. My dad grew up going to Trinity Worcester. Kyle, Owen, and Meera have never missed an Easter Sunday there any single year of their lives. And ever since he met me, in 1993, Braydon has only missed going to Trinity that one Easter in Charleston.
Singing “Christ the Lord is Risen Today,” and listening to the Hallelujah Chorus sung from the balcony of that grand place, knowing that this is what my dad did, what my grandparents did, what I remember doing as a child, and what my children are now doing, makes the work and annoyances and aggravations that sometimes come with keeping up with a tradition feel completely worth it. Hugging my grandfather today, seeing my cousins, seeing my kids hug their great-grandfather, seeing my kids play with my cousins’ kids… that’s the stuff right in the middle of the worth-it-ness of the whole thing. Because, honestly, keeping up a tradition like that takes a lot of commitment. But today, despite having been up since 5am, despite a total of 9 hours in a minivan on the highway, despite several near-misses with “bad backseat behavior” in the car, despite 3 stops at Dunkin Donuts, despite a couple of melt-downs from the youngest member of our 5-person-crew, despite a bunch of sugar-and-cumulative-exhaustion-induced-patience-trying-moments… not to mention the planning and packing and strategizing that go into a trip like this… despite all that fluff/nonsense/superficiality/detail… it is all so, so, so worth it.
At least until we can’t do it anymore, or until it truly doesn’t make sense to keep the tradition going any longer, until then– it will be Easter in Worcester.