Blossoms: The magnolias in Lawrenceville and Princeton are in full bloom. The large, dark pink, cup-shaped buds have opened to reveal the creamy white insides of their petals, giving the trees a variegated appearance.

Watching: The Ice Storm. A bleak movie populated by unsympathetic characters, but beautifully directed. I was 12 in 1973, and don't really remember: Did people actually wear such hideous fashions?

The Color Purple

Listen, God love everything you love--and a mess
of stuff you don't. But more than anything else,
God love admiration.

You saying God vain? I ast.

Naw, she say. Not vain, just wanting to share
a good thing. I think it pisses God off if you walk
by the color purple in a field somewhere
and don't notice it.

Alice Walker, The Color Purple

Yesterday driving to pick up Tab in Princeton, I was pointing out all the flowering trees and bushes to the boys. Soon they were identifying them, too. "Look, Mama! Another weeping cherry tree!" "More forsythia!" They kept it up on the way home, much to Tab's amusement. He thinks I'm a little strange to keep obsessing about the blossoms.

Blame it on my eight years in New England, I told him. Summer is lovely in Maine, and the colors of fall are gorgeous; but the Maine autumn is hard to love when you remember that a long, hard winter follows close on its heels. Spring up there is a fleeting moment between winter and summer--mud season, they call it--in which the thawing snow and ice turn dirt roads and yards into treacherous mudpits. Few flowering trees grow in Maine; thus, I was unprepared for the ravishing beauty of spring when I moved back down to New Jersey in early 1987. How could I have spent the first 17 years of my life here and not have noticed the glory of April? I vowed then that I would never let another spring go by and not celebrate it.

Shug Avery's words in The Color Purple capture my feelings about spring. It would seem ungrateful--even sinful--not to appreciate how the lacy appearance of flowering pear trees on South Broad Street beautifies an ugly neighborhood. Or forsythia shining out brightly along the roadside on a grey day. Or the delicate fragrance of cherry trees in bloom. I think we are meant to notice God's glorious creation, revel in it, and offer a prayer of thanksgiving...or at least a hearty "Well done!"

Tab had a bad dream just before 6 this morning, and his yelling woke me up. I went downstairs to use the bathroom, then returned to bed but was unable to fall back asleep. By 6:30 I gave up the attempt, knowing that if I did manage to fall asleep I'd just have to wake up in another half hour. The sun was just rising, and the light seeping through the miniblinds was soft and pearly grey. Birds sang their morning songs loudly outdoors, but otherwise the street was quiet.

I wish I could say I used the extra time this morning productively, but instead I just surfed the net and caught up on a few of the online journals I follow. Tab doesn't understand my fondness for reading the journals of others. "Why do you care about a bunch of strangers?" he asks. I like reading about other lives, the triumphs and tribulations of people with whom I identify as well as those who lead lives very different from my own. The best journal writers out there inspire and challenge me to observe more keenly and report more accurately my own life.

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