Sunday was a gorgeous day of blue blue sky and bright bright sun, so after we got home from church, Doug and I decided we’d go for a run.

With weather this nice, we had to be out in it. So for the second day in a row, we bundled the babies into fleeces and popped them in the double stroller. Jack ran with Doug and the boys, and I pushed Jane in the single stroller. We make quite the entourage, let me tell you.

Doug and Jack soon outstripped me, which is not surprising. When I say I went for a run, I’m being generous. Most people, including me, can walk faster than I run. By the time I panted up to Sunset Park, they’d been waiting awhile, watching the two sailboats on the sound and the clouds massing in the sky.

We walked home.

And this is where my story grows wings. As we walked, we talked. The kids wanted to know when we’re going to go back to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. “We haven’t been since Thanksgiving!” Jack said.

“We’ll go up on Easter,” I told him.

“Easter! I love Easter,” he said.

“Really?” I said. “Why is that?” I expected him to say he liked hunting eggs at his grandparents’ because Doug’s mom always hides money in the eggs, and my son is Scrooge McDuck.

He said, “I love that you come into our room super early when it’s still dark and you have a lighted candle in your hand and you wake us up and you say, ‘Christ is risen,’ and we say, ‘He is risen indeed.’ I love that.”

I nearly fell over. I have only done that the past two or three years, since I read about someone else’s tradition of waking her children this way on Easter morning. I didn’t expect him to remember. And I certainly didn’t expect this to be the thing he loves most about Easter.

I wanted to shout a loud Hallelujah right there in the middle of the sidewalk because sometimes I go through my days, doing the things I do—liturgy, laundry, leg lifts—and I wonder what it’s all for, if it even matters, and then one of my children says something that knocks my breath right out of me and I realize yes yes yes, it matters. The things I say, the things I do, they matter. Little people notice. And remember.

I didn’t shout Hallelujah. At least not out loud. It would’ve embarrassed Jack. But I shouted in my heart because, really, these are the moments you live for.