Layers.

That’s what Carol does to stay warm. It also explains why garments hang from every conceivable place in the house from door handles to chair backs. But she’s right.

On Sunday I started with a t-shirt, then a long sleeved shirt, followed by a fleece and a down vest before slipping on an over-sized sailing jacket. I was hot just getting it all on. However, decades of Easter morning sunrise services have taught me regardless of a forecast for a sunny day, like this Sunday turned out to be, it can be bone-cold while overlooking Narragansett Bay from Warwick Neck Light. I must have looked like the Pillsbury doughboy.

Even with all the layers she could have donned, Carol decided the night before she would watch the sunrise from the house. She was asleep and so was Ollie when I left the house. The horizon was brightening. The moon was full, its light starting to retreat. It was 5:35. I listened for song birds. It was too early for them. Instead, in the still air came the chatter of Bryant Geese, the bay’s Arctic winter visitors. Surely any day now they would fly north.

I pulled onto an empty West Shore Road. Pipedreams, an hour-long Sunday program devoted to organ music, was playing on classical station WCRB. It’s been that way for years. Maybe host Michael Barone had selected the same program played on previous Easters.

It was an overture to memories of Easters past.

I can’t say how many Warwick Light sunrises I’ve attended, maybe 40, or it could even be more.  There have been snow flurries and mornings with umbrellas. Yet the scene remains inspirational and whether the brilliant orb of the sun breaks the horizon to cast shafts across still waters or gray skies brighten to reveal wind-swept waves, the new day arrives.

The lighthouse is a constant, its green beacon drawing Easter celebrants and letting them know the road goes no further. In years past when a Coast Guard officer and his family lived in nearby house, I climbed the spiral stairs to the platform with its view of the bay islands and the bridges. That was a treat, which I doubt was repeated.

The lighthouse was the backdrop for the service, a sentinel looking east like those who came to celebrate the mystery of the day. Families, friends and even strangers huddle in the approaching dawn surely for warmth but drawn by the Easter story of the resurrection and life hereafter. This is a message for all, one told every Easter.

Although churches hosting the service and pastors delivering the sermon have changed over the years, the Easter Warwick Neck sunrise service is a constant. I hope this will remain so for years to come.

Regardless of the weather, the songs, prayers and message melds with the commanding view to tell the story of redemption, healing and life eternal…and remember the layers.