Spring Sproings Eternal

Around eighteen years ago in the fall, I planted a bag of mystery bulbs I’d found at the dollar store around the palm tree in our front yard.

Green stalks shot up through the mulch after the brief chill of winter, their tips filling with tight strips of buds. A few weeks later their floral secret burst forth in a riot of color:

They were freesias, dozens of trumpet bells in red and yellow, emanating a hypnotic bouquet that smelled like a cross between a Jane Austen novel and a bowl of Froot Loops.

As bulbs are wont to do, they came back every spring, another beautiful marker in the cycle of our family as the blooms of our loins grew up and out.

Like the children, they could be unpredictable, sometimes appearing before the camellias dropped the last of their pillowy petals, or waiting until the azaleas revved up their annual colorful uproar. There was the small miracle of showing up in early February for Abraham’s bar mitzvah, and last year’s bumper bonanza that had vases filled in every room.

Flower porn, circa 2013

But this winter hit different. Wetter, colder, darker than ever. I jumped for joy at the blanket of snow that covered the yard in January—until I remembered the delicate fleshy leaves trapped beneath the sheets we’d laid down to protect them, now soggy and frozen over. When I peeled them off after the melt, our precious freesia plants lay brown and bruised, looking like the botanical version of roadkill.

Heartbroken, I added this to the growing list of griefs and distresses unfurling like a medieval scroll of plagues: The crushing cruelty and treasonous traitorship of the dictator and his unelected henchmen. Dehumanization of transfolk and immigrants. Humanitarian crises across battlegrounds and borders.

Just this week: Illegal deportations, broken ceasefires, the erasure of the Navajo Code Talkers. (Really, losers? So fragile, white supremacy.)

Now is the winter of our discontent, and it has been a fucking doozy.