we don't deserve ornamental cherry trees

and other eastertide blessings

there is no joy quite like watching your child make friends

Where do I start?
I could be on the nose.
Literally, the trees are blooming and the air smells of perfume.
We do not deserve ornamental cherry trees, or pear, or even the tinseled maple with its chartreuse buds. I watched as the wind shook the tiny green confetti loose, flying through the air, and told my son to look out the window.
It’s snowing! he said, and it was. A snow he could run barefoot through and not feel the soles of his feet burn and go numb.

Then there’s the sitting with friends and cheap margaritas over a fire pit, reveling at the good fortune we all had to have lived just two doors down from one another. Laughing at the thought of rebuffing the offer to use our neighbor’s truck.
It’s yours. Take it whenever. No, I’m serious. Anytime.
The ease at which we swap children and text when dinner is ready so (again) bare feet can run the block back to our homes with new stories and cheek muscles tired from smiling.

Or the other group of friends, over cheaper margaritas yet, discussing the firmament of heaven, that hard shell, and debating what it was for anyway. To roll it up, eventually—that is the only answer. And realizing how wild it is that God enjoys watching things grow, and that the fruit was good to look at and eat, but in good time, and had they waited, oh how ripe it would have been, but here we are and would we have done any better? Likely not. So pass the can of marg because we’re only in Genesis three and things get even spicier, just you wait and see, and we do—with bated breathe like children leaning on their knees as the village storyteller winds up to the pitch. Once upon a time ain’t got nothin’ on this story. It’ll blow your mind. Take it to the bank.

I feel it in the pinching of pennies. The making of meal plans so that we don’t frequent the burrito chain that sucks our bank account dry. I wince when I see my favorite breakfast sausage has gone up two dollars in three months and then shake my head because I know how to make breakfast sausage my scratch, and I should, but I’m also exhausted from doing all the dishes by hand and stepping on invisible LEGO’s and am needing to catch a break with breakfast.
God will provide the sausage. He will bring the bacon.
Until then, I will save my mason jars and make my iced matcha at home. The backyard soil will be plowed up and put into cedar boxes and maybe a radish or two will grow. This might be the year that I learn to pickle not out of fear, but out of glory.

It’s the thousand tangibles and the infinite intangibles. The friend who swings by for ten minutes and tries to do my dishes. So I pop her with a towel and say today I will rob you of a blessing because she has forgotten that having her stand in my kitchen is the blessing. It’s the drive to my son’s jiu jitsu class in a car without air conditioning only to find it’s been canceled, and winding our way back home, heat rippling, with the sunroof pulling the hellaciousness up through the roof. We take the curves long and slow and throw our bodies against the car wall, hands out the windows, voices at top wheeeeee! because a canceled class just became a small road trip and a reason to recognize that winter is finally over.

Did you miss it?
Winter is finally over.
Easter has come.
Someone done broke the stone table.

I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

Always,
Emily