Today was 'The Day'
There is a day in early springtime when it seems that most of the trees, in unison, seem to pop their leaves and go from buds to foliage.
It’s an amazing sight and every year, I try to find the day – the tipping point where there are more trees with leaves than without. I think today was that day.
On a walk through Fox Island County Park in Fort Wayne with my children this evening, I marveled at the leaves on the trees, the unfurling of ferns in the woods and the life springing forth and…I smiled.
In other years, today is the day when I would have called my mother to say, “It’s the day! It’s the day!” She knew what I meant because she always watched for “the day” too. It was almost a race to see who would call the other one first to announce the official, without a doubt arrival of spring.
She didn’t call today.
In fact, today marks the fourth year that I couldn’t expect a phone call from her. I can’t believe we lost her four years ago this evening. So much has happened in that time since she left us – how life has changed.
And how much, also, life has stayed the same. I still watch for the day and I still think of her when I watch for it. I know it will never come, but I wait for her call. How fitting that today was that day -- a day I should've been so sad and marked the day with tears. But, instead I smiled.
Maybe she was walking with me in the woods and smiling too.