Every year, my church has an Easter egg hunt for the Sunday School kids. It’s always the same every year. The day before Easter, kids 1 – 12 show up at 10 am. Each kid gets a white paper bag with their name and age group on it. The adults running the program carefully organize the kids into their age groups, and send them off to hunt for eggs.

Ever since we started going to the church, my sister and I loved the Easter egg hunt. We would race off into the field, grabbing as many plastic eggs as we could find. My sister loved the prizes. I loved the competition. After 10 minutes or so, all of the eggs had been found. We headed inside the church with all the other kids, excitedly opening the colorful plastic eggs. The prizes were always the same, plastic rings, stickers, chocolate eggs wrapped in tin foil. We carefully piled our prizes together, treasuring the colorful little toys like they were rubies. My sister loved all of her prizes, but I had a favorite. My favorite prize was a tiny chick the size of my thumbnail. It was a soft, yellow fluff ball, with little plastic feet, oval sticker eyes, and an orange felt beak. I treasured all of the chicks I found, cuddling them in my hands; they were a little family.
Of course, I eventually grew up, as all kids do. At 13 I was too old for my favorite childhood activities and still too young for a lot of other activities. I could no longer participate in the yearly Easter egg hunt. So that year, I joined the “teenage helpers.” They were the kids that hid the Easter eggs, and helped out with whatever the adults needed to get the egg hunt ready.

As I was hiding the Easter eggs, I dropped one. The little plastic egg hit the grass and popped open, revealing a tiny yellow chick. I stared at it, an unexpected feeling of nostalgia washing over me. Then I slowly bent down and closed the egg back up, hiding it in the grass carefully. The chicks were no longer mine; there were other kids now to claim them.

An hour later, I was collecting the plastic eggs that the kids had gone through. I saw all the piles of trinkets, the plastic rings, stickers, and chocolate eggs that the kids treasured. Among the piles were plenty of the little yellow chicks. And sitting against the wall, done opening all his eggs, a little boy was carefully cradling a handful of chicks.