The Feel Good Way

This Easter is different. This Easter, he’s ready.

Just over two years old, sturdy on his feet, curious about absolutely everything — my grandson has officially crossed the threshold into the age of magic. The age where a garden full of hidden chocolate eggs is basically the greatest thing that has ever happened in all of human history. I’ve been quietly looking forward to this for weeks.

But before we do the eggs, we need to talk about where they come from. And I’m sorry, but it’s not a bunny.

In Belgium -and across much of Catholic Europe- we grew up with a completely different story. One I think is far more beautiful, and honestly, a little more mysterious. On the Thursday before Easter, all the church bells go silent. They stop ringing, and according to the story, they fly away. All the way to Rome, to visit the Pope and get his blessing. Then, on Easter Sunday morning, they come back. Flying home over the fields and the rooftops and the gardens, dropping chocolate eggs for the children below. I mean. Come on. That’s a gorgeous story!

As kids, we drew them. Church bells with little wings, soaring across crayon skies, eggs tumbling out below them. Every classroom looked the same in the week before Easter : a gallery of flying bells in every color imaginable. It was just what you did. Back then, you also felt the silence when they left, because bells were everywhere, marking the hours, part of the daily soundtrack of life. Their absence was almost physical. But today? Bells don’t ring the way they used to. Most kids barely notice them at all. So the story has to be kept alive deliberately. Passed on by people who still think it matters. I think it matters.

I should mention : I’m not religious. Not even a little bit. But culture is a different thing entirely. These stories are part of who we are, shaped by centuries of tradition whether we signed up for it or not. You don’t have to believe in something to want to keep it alive. And this story? This one has wings. Literally

Easter is tomorrow, and I am already keeping a very close eye on the weather forecast. Because in Belgium, Easter Sunday morning means one thing with near-total certainty: rain. Grey skies, wet grass, that particular April drizzle that feels both completely predictable and somehow still surprising every single year. So you wait. You hide the eggs as late as humanly possible, watching the sky, buying yourself every extra minute you can before the chocolate starts melting into the lawn. And then — modern problems, modern solutions : you take photos on your phone of every single hiding spot. Because nothing kills the magic of Easter quite like discovering a forgotten foil-wrapped egg three weeks later, somewhere behind a flower pot, in a state nobody wants to think about.

I can’t wait. Tomorrow morning, slightly damp and one eye on the clouds, I’ll be out there tucking chocolates behind the lavender, under the bench, along the flower bed, phone in hand, photographing every spot like a tiny crime scene. A trail of small shiny treasures waiting for small curious hands.

And then I’ll watch his face when he steps outside. That pause. That tiny intake of breath. That look of pure oh. He’ll find egg after egg, occasionally stopping to try and unwrap one immediately (fair), occasionally looking up at the sky for no reason at all, as if some part of him already knows.

Maybe the bells are still up there somewhere, heading home. I like to think so.