One rainy day walking back through the buildings in my apartment complex while shielding some delicious smelling take out from the rain, I glanced up and noticed a few of my neighbors windows for the first time. It’s always nice to see all the twinkling fairy lights spiraling around balcony railings in the evening but it was only five o’clock on this watery day and although the sky was a thundering steel grey, the lights had yet to be switched on. My attention was drawn instead to the windows on a set of sliding glass doors that looked like they’d been paper mâchéd from top to bottom with multicolored tissue paper with a different colored section in the middle in the shape of a cross. It looked like a mother’s genius idea for an Easter craft project with the kids, homemade stained glass.

Once I saw the first cross I started to notice others scattered in the windows of different apartments. Each one was like a ray of sunshine cutting through the rain. I smiled to think of all the families who’d made the most of their cloistered Easters with new traditions like this. Even though egg hunts were limited this year, people were teaming up to bring some Easter beauty home and the magic of it was still alive in kids eyes as they prayed for a visit from the Easter Bunny. It reminded me of a time when I was sprinkling reindeer food on the snowy front lawn with my sister and trying not to close my eyes after lullabies from my parents because I had to meet Santa. It could be argued that I’m all grown up now (I feel more like a kid who acts like a grown up sometimes) but no matter how old I get, that magic that fueled the bounce in my step when I was eleven is still there and I see it in things like this.