susannefortune

This picture is not Easter Sunday, but I am positive it is a Sunday morning. We are headed to church. We never missed in fact we all have perfect attendance pins that prove it.

Lanny, Susanne, Monte, Gary and Gene, we are family. I have been thinking about my childhood this week as Easter was an important time then and now for me. We didn’t get lots of candy and stuff, maybe an Easter Egg Hunt in the backyard, but I have other memories. I remember getting all new clothes, including underwear, socks, shoes, a barrette, the whole outfit was new. We celebrated Easter, the risen Lord, a new beginning. We started the day out early at Sun Rise Service (in our new clothes), then Sunday School and then Church. As usual our mother would have a lovely dinner planned and ready in the oven and then back to evening church, in my new outfit. I can still smell that roast beef smell coming through the door on any Sunday as we walked into the house. We sang He Arose, at every service and I still have that hymn and others memorized in my head.

It was a tradition and I remember it so clearly. It is who I am, grounded not so in the traditions like I experienced as a child, but in my faith, a child-like belief, but those hymns like He Lives still ring in my head and heart as “He walks with me and He talks with me”…Easter memories in my life.