I spent last Thursday morning on a flower field trip with Toddler and her Preschool class. We took the “city bus” to the Central Park Conservatory. After a brutal winter and a gaggle of gray weeks, it was finally a glorious day here in Manhattan. A glorious day and a perfect day to troupe with tiny ones around a spectacular spot full of sun and soul, wind and wisdom, color and life, bitty buds and full-blown blossoms.

We had a list of flowers to look for. We found most of them, and when we did, we checked off the identifying pictures with purple crayon check marks. But a few trees had not yet bloomed. But the kids were neither deterred nor disappointed. With big eyes and open minds, they approached these trees and peered through their mini magnifying glasses at the branches full of green buds waiting to pop. And as they did this, I smiled. I smiled as a silly pair of questions floated through my head.

What does a bud experience when it’s about to burst? What does a flower feel like when it’s about to bloom?

They are silly questions because buds don’t have experiences and flowers don’t feel. They are silly questions only a child would ask. In my estimation, they are wonderful questions. The kinds that come before common sense settles in and education elevates.

After the field trip, I dropped Toddler off at her school for the short remainder of her day. To kill time before pickup, I walked a few blocks to grab a coffee. Coffee in hand, I walked slowly, aimlessly, along sidewalks that felt at once familiar and foreign. I looked around. At the flurry of faces splotched by spring sun. At the slow-shifting clouds and cars. I fiddled with my phone, clicking a little link to something big. An article. And I read. In seconds, I lost myself. In words, exquisite and evocative words, words that made me feel something major.

A swelling of pressure, of purpose, of power.

This feeling is something I’ve been waiting for. Since having my baby, I’ve been floating. On hormones. On humility. On helplessness and hopefulness. On happiness. I’ve felt wonderfully scattered and beautifully stuck and delightfully distant. Distant from many things. From most things. From my former self, my future dreams, my words. In the cracks of my days and the quiet of the night, I’ve told myself not to worry. I’ve told myself that a time would come when I’d feel it.

A creative rumbling. A poetic returning. An existential roar.

And last Thursday? I felt it.

And today, on this Monday morning at the end of April? I still feel it.

And so. As the sun shimmies through the window on me and my new life and what’s to come, I’m smiling.

What does a bud experience when it’s about to burst? What does a flower feel like when it’s about to bloom?

I imagine it experiences this. I imagine it feels like this.

This.

(I’m back, kids! Really back!)

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Have you ever felt so full of happy anticipation and creative chaos that you might just burst? Have you ever read something that was so good and so true it made you want to sit down and write and write and write some more? Are you happy that it’s finally feeling a bit like spring?

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