I have been thinking about this thing in our yard that I noticed the other day. I was not quite sure where to put it -- Facebook seemed wrong, so did a Twitter thread, and the other blog (more on that soon I hope) wasn't right, either. This is also a weird thing to be writing on Easter Sunday, but maybe not, since pretty much all of the familiar trappings are absent this year.
Anyway, I saw this in the yard. It's the beginnings of a dogwood blossom. It's spring where I am, and things have been happening for a while. Daffodils and stuff. It's nice, I guess. Even after many years here, in SC as a transplant from New England it astonishes me every year how early everything pops off in Zone Seven, soon to be Eight, probably. One of the best things about flowers and plants is that they allow lots of room to cultivate relatively harmless prejudices -- loving yellow roses, but not red, etc. My mother would not allow gladiolas, b/c she insisted that they were for Mafia funerals. (She also loved The Sopranos, but that's another story.) Dogwoods are a favorite of mine, and we are lucky to have several trees where we live. One of the things I love about dogwoods is that they allow me to have a contrarian take, which is a hobby of mine. The hot botanic take is that dogwood foliage in the fall is better than dogwood blossoms in the spring. I will die on this hill, preferably in the fall, but I will admit that when the white blossoms appear to float in the dusk off of our deck, it's pretty magical.
I saw this blossom the other day, and it simply did not compute. I recognized it, but it did not make sense, in the way that seeing a bus from the wrong city driving down the street does not make sense. I realized, to my sorrow, that I processed it intellectually, but could not do the emotional math of seeing something that will soon be beautiful, that evidence of something I would look forward to was not something I could process cognitively. I have been lucky in this pandemic, so far. I did not have any child or elder care responsibilities. I had a loving and understanding partner. I had the time and money to be pretty comfortable in our home. I did not have to risk my life to earn a paycheck. But so much of my world disappeared, and has been gone for more than a year now, that I have forgotten how anticipation and joy work.
I was lucky enough to make it over the vaccine hurdle, and am, I guess, as good to go as I will be for the foreseeable future, whatever that means. My partner will also be fully vaccinated soon. But the question of what this freedom is, or what to do with it, continues to gnaw at me. With a year practice, I had gotten pretty good at being withdrawn from the world, except for trips to the grocery store and walking the dog. Speaking of dogs, the idea of rejoining the world that seems to have continued in my absence makes me feel like one of those dogs they rescue from a lab, who is afraid of grass b/c they have never encountered it.
The implacable beauty of nature through this past year plus has been a solace, when it has not been disconcerting. I was lucky enough to be in Vermont during the foliage season for the first time in many, many years. I took a lot of pictures, and I put some of them on Instagram, but it never really felt like they registered, or triggered the delight they should have. It would be nice to conclude this whatever it is with some sense of the comfort spring brings, or that the blossom of a smile on a friend's face brings, and I certainly hope that day comes, but for now, I just want to register how this picture reminds me how the pandemic has broken my brain in ways I hope time will fix.
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