We don’t know what we’ll miss until it’s gone
The forsythia tree is in full bloom right now, as if lit from within, the golden branches the brightest thing framed in my window, the brightest plant in my yard.
The tree that grows is not a bush, or shrub, or plant — all of which one can order through flower retailers. This forsythia is a tree. It lights up like each flower was illuminated against the evergreens curled with vines behind it.
It reminds me of a forsythia shrub at the end of my garden in Minnesota. Only the lowest branches, protected by snow, blossomed in the spring. It was a paltry specimen, with minimal effort put forth to create a not-quite-admirable bloom.
“My” tree was in the neighbor’s yard there, an old maple whose canopy shaded his entire yard, and half mine, too. A pair of orioles nested in that tree, and many years later, I miss their birdsong in the spring as a sign they had returned to the maple, and all was right with my morning cup of coffee on the deck. Their lilting song is immediately recognizable; I miss it here on the West Coast. I would look till I found their nest, like a little knitted backpack hanging from a branch.
We don’t know what we will miss until it’s gone, how the most ordinary rhythms will be the ones we carry with us. A pair of orioles and birdsong from the same tree for fifteen years is a remembered gift.
One early morning, a great stag with a rack like Bambi’s father stared at me, one creature observing another. I had heard rumors of him, the great suburban stag that traversed backyards and made his home in the depths of the nature center, rarely seen. But I was listening to birdsong, and he was appreciating the spring day too, and we watched each other with interest before he loped away. That encounter, too, I remember as a great moment between the two of us.
It is a spring day here, alternately cloudy and sunny, a reminder that there were many spring days before and there will be spring days to come.
Maybe I will remember the forsythia fondly.
Leave a Comment