Cherry Blossoms and Messages on Walls

Omg. Springtime.

To be honest, I do like winter. I love snow….as long as my kids aren’t home for 3 extra weeks with remote work. I love bundling up outside and fireplace inside. I love the idea of hibernating, resting, doing the cozy work to recuperate energy. I love watching birds eat from the feeder, which we can’t do in the summer because, you know, Bears. I love giant sweatpants and fuzzy blankets. I love sleeping when it’s cold out.

However. Seasons matter, and I love a season change of any kind.  Around late February, my eyeballs start craving green and color. The grey and brown unchanging landscape of sticks and bare ground becomes desolate and forlorn, and my energy levels, to put it eloquently, suck. My body literally needs Spring.

And here she comes, to save the day. The non-flowering trees haven’t popped yet, but the cherry branches are twirling in the wind, the pear trees are puffed out, glowing in the sunlight. The dogwood buds are balled up, ready to burst, and the grass has sudden woken up and declared itself alive. The early-dreamer forsythia, whose yellow blooms survived an early march snow squall’s chill, are already turning to their faithful green summer standard. Hyacinth has given its quick greeting, purple petals bold and fleeting.

My heart feels stronger and lighter. Does yours?

Our world has so much sorrow and horror occurring literally every day, that I think hope is kind of a shocking feeling right now. If not shocking, it has at least become unfamiliar to me. It takes me a moment to recognize the emotion, like a befuddled Ms. Hannigan wandering into the orphans’ room saying disbelievingly… “Is that….happiness I hear?”

We went for a walk the other evening and ran into some neighbor friends, and while the kids played for a bit, we caught up on life. Our conversation led to interesting/funny dreams, and my friend recently remembered a random dream she had about our kids. In it, our school had somehow lost its counselor, and Bryce and Bria had painted on the wall in big letters: “We are here for you.” She told me this,and I literally held onto my heart. “Oh good job, dream babies,” I said out loud while we laughed.

Honestly, I have thought about that silly little dream so many times since then. This simple message. One that maybe my mama heart needed to hear. My nutball kids wandering through someone else’s dream, doing the most important thing I’d ever hope to teach them. I mean, sure it was in dream world, but I’ll take it, man. As a mother, I worry so much about school and friends and the constant logistics and work of parenting that sometimes it’s easy to forget what I really want my children to know at their core.

We talked about the power of dreams (that’s another whimsy blog for another whimsy day!), and I loved this little story from a sleeping brain, sweet like a cherry tree’s playful pink branches dancing gently in the wind. “It’s been a long winter, babe, but we got you.” A burst of color in a dreary landscape to remind us that the good stuff still exists. Compassion is written across walls everywhere. If we’re looking for it. If we’re writing it. If we’re teaching our kids to write it too.

Flowers don’t fix war and they don’t erase sorrow and they don’t solve everything but they do send a little message to your heart to stay strong, stay joyful, stay hopeful. Be here. Be present.

Kindness doesn’t fix war and it doesn’t erase sorrow and it doesn’t solve everything but it does send a message, right? Stay strong. Stay joyful. Stay hopeful.

Be here. Be present.

I hope that as these spring colors trickle into our vision and we feel the warmth of the returning sun on our skin, that our energy, too, feels the change. I hope our dreams leave us random love notes, whispering into the night that Good has always found a way. I hope my kids and your kids and all of us paint on walls in colors as bright as April and May- “We’re here for you,” to whomever might need it.  I hope we unfold ourselves into this next season like a bloom who can feel…..it’s time for the light. Breathe it in.

Well. Except the pollen.

Avoid breathing that, my dreamers.