Pickled Eggs: A Taste of Home

Image by Park and Vine

Pickled beet eggs — or simply pickled eggs, as we call them — are an Easter tradition. Growing up in the hills of West Virginia, we could always count on these deeply dyed delicacies gracing our kitchen every spring.

Although it has been 29 years since I last called West Virginia home, I still carry on the pickled egg tradition today. Recently, I made a batch, and as I bit into the first one, tears filled my eyes as memories came rushing in.

Memories of—

• Picking out our Easter dresses — something new and special just for that day.
• Dyeing Easter eggs at the kitchen table with food dye and vinegar. I will never forget that smell.
• Easter baskets waiting for us on Easter morning, filled with plastic grass and hollow chocolate bunnies.
• Easter Sunday at my home church — dressed up, singing, and celebrating the resurrection of Jesus.
• Hunting Easter eggs in the church cemetery — yes, we did that.
• Easter dinner at Mamaw Pauline’s and Papaw Bill’s, with ham and all of the fixings.
• Mamaw would hide eggs all around the property while Papaw sat on the porch watching alongside Mom and Dad. We hunted those eggs so many times the shells were cracked.

These are memories I will cherish forever. And when I look back now, I see just how much has changed.

• I no longer dye eggs.
• There are no Easter baskets waiting for me on Easter morning.
• The building of my home church still stands, but the congregation that once filled it has moved on.
• There are no more family dinners at my grandparents’ table.
• Mamaw and Papaw have left this world for their heavenly home years ago, and the house that once held all of those memories was consumed by fire.

It was in that one bite of pickled egg that everything became bittersweet — the joy of remembering and the ache of missing a home that no longer exists, arriving at the same time, in the same moment.

A moment of grief and gratitude, held together in that pickled egg.

Home is not always a place you can return to. Sometimes it lives in a smell, a taste — in the smallest, most unexpected things. For me, it lives in a jar of pickled eggs. And every spring, without fail, home finds me again.

My prayer for you this Easter is simple: cherish the moments, even the small ones. The memories you make today may be the ones that carry you tomorrow.

The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay.” Matthew 28:5-6

To you and your family — may this Easter be a reminder of the grace and love that conquered the grave. Christ is risen, and in that eternal truth, we find our greatest hope.