On the life lessons I'm learning from Washington's famous cherry blossom
These flowers cannot know (I don’t think) how much I depend on their sweet little faces for a glimpse of joy in my everyday, or the more profound lessons they're reminding me about how to live well.
The cherry blossom is out in DC and it’s so beautiful, but its impermanence is making my heart feel a bit heavy, because I know it’s soon going to be gone. Right now, it’s everywhere, softening the massive grandeur of the national mall, domesticating the grandeur of the Capitol building, doubling itself by reflection as it droops over the water of the Tidal Basin and all along the Potomac river, frothing to the side of the Jefferson memorial, covering the National Mall. It’s in all our domestic spaces too, lining the streets around our home, covering us on the walk to school, decorating the facade of Evangeline’s huge junior high school.
I just can’t stand the fact that very soon - a few days in fact - it’s all going to be gone. Anticipating the blossom’s arrival, which is rightfully famous in Washington, then watching it bloom, transforming the city scape for a couple of brilliant weeks, is so gorgeous, and yet also so poignant; I want to slow it down, to keep it here for longer, to hold tighter onto the moment, as if I might be able to stop it flying past. The blossom is such a poignant metaphor for so much of life, a reminder of the relentless forward pull of time, which never stands still. The passing of time makes my heart break, every single day; sometimes (in fact, quite often, especially as I march on through my forties) I walk around in my days on the point of tears about the agonising fucking poignancy of the fleeting nature of life. But I’m trying to use these two brief weeks when the blossom is all over Washington to learn, and relearn, some important life lessons.