Proud - Father V0 13 0 Easter Westy

“He sure did,” I said, my voice still gravelly. “Did he eat the carrot we left?”

“Daddy,” he said, serious now. “The bunny says I’m kind. Am I kind?”

But because I was finally, fully, present for the thing that mattered. proud father v0 13 0 easter westy

Not because I had done everything right.

He nodded, satisfied, and ran off to find the next egg. Here’s the thing about West Yorkshire on Easter morning. It’s not picturesque. It’s not a chocolate box. The hills are moody. The sky is a pewter lid. But there’s a particular light—a stubborn, hopeful light—that breaks through around 8 AM. It hits the damp pavement and makes everything glisten. “He sure did,” I said, my voice still gravelly

Easter, I’ve learned, is a particularly tricky build. Christmas has the big budget—trees, lights, a clear mythology. Easter is weirder. It’s more intimate. A rabbit breaks into your house and leaves boiled, dyed chicken embryos in a woven plastic basket. And in West Yorkshire, where the weather can’t decide between resurrection and another good frost, Easter feels like a metaphor struggling to happen.

I paused. Honest answer? I don’t know anymore. I was raised with the resurrection story—the stone rolled away, the empty tomb. Now I’m something vaguer. A hopeful agnostic. A father who wants his son to have wonder without walls. Am I kind

I’d almost thrown it away. It felt silly. But at 6:52 AM, Theo carried that note to me like a captured flag.

I sat on the floor, back against the sofa, and I wrote in a notes app I keep just for him. The note said: