Spring Ahead

When we moved to our current house, eight years ago, I bought a bag of 100 daffodil bulbs.  It seemed a ridiculous number, a luxurious indulgence, and as I planted the brown lumps I imagined a riot of yellow color, uncountable riches poking through the ground to announce Spring’s arrival.  It’s my favorite season, and in the time we’ve been here the daffodils have naturalized, spreading throughout the garden.  But it’s not the blanket of uninterrupted color I thought it would be.  The hundred bulbs that seemed to be so plentiful when I was digging them into the ground turned out to be not quite enough.

Last week I took the kids to the doctor’s office for a checkup.  I was leafing through a parenting magazine when this statistic caught my eye: There are approximately 940 Saturdays between when you bring your baby home from the hospital and when she heads off to college.  I’m no mathematician, but that number seems about right.

Almost 1,000 days.  It would have seemed a lifetime to me, all those years ago when I first became a parent. But now I’m over halfway there, and the days are slipping through my fingers.  The harder I try to hold on, to pack each moment with meaning, the faster they go. One thousand Mondays to kiss a sleep-scented, bed loving boy awake.  One thousand Sundays to curl up in the sun with my book-devouring daughter. One thousand weekends, while I blink and each crop of daffodils grows and fades, a reminder of how fleeting is Spring, the giddiest, most promising season of all.

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Liz Michalski

6 Comments

  1. Rick Wilcox on March 20, 2012 at 12:12 pm

    stunning, heartfelt and wonderful. This truly touched my heart. Masterful, Liz. Well done.

    • liz on March 20, 2012 at 9:38 pm

      Thank you so much for the kind words, Rick! Hug those grandbabies for me!

  2. fandina72 on March 20, 2012 at 4:17 pm

    Beautiful. A wonderful reminder to really ‘be’ in every day, every moment. I really needed this today. Thank you.

    • liz on March 20, 2012 at 9:38 pm

      Thanks for stopping by, Fandina. It’s so hard to remind myself every day that time is passing quickly, and then all of a sudden another week is gone.

  3. Jan O'Hara (Tartitude) on March 20, 2012 at 7:18 pm

    Beautiful, Liz. Melancholy and gratitude-filled all in one.

    • liz on March 20, 2012 at 9:37 pm

      Thanks, Jan. It’s truly how I feel these days …

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