Now and Then

I went for an early morning walk yesterday. I took the river trail. I usually avoid it when I'm alone, but something was pulling me closer to the banks. Since spring is slow to arrive in these parts, the branches are still bare. The sight lines give me some measure of security when I'm alone in the woods. I forged ahead on familiar paths listening to my book, but I kept finding myself distracted by the longing ohr ohr ohr of the morning dove, or the blue jay's angry jeer, or the chip cheer of the cardinal as I moved deeper into their territory. I was noticing things. That's not always my modus operandi. Many days - many more than I prefer - I barrel through my busy life the taskmaster with tunnel vision, but not yesterday. Yesterday, I was present.

It was a smell that stopped me dead in my tracks. A familiar smell that brought a memory back to life. And then memories. I was deluged by a flood of intense emotion. The kind that builds endlessly and then rolls over everything in an instant. It's akin to your life flashing before your eyes in that telltale moment only instead of images, it's sensations. Feelings not facts. Samskaras waiting for just the right stimuli to rise up and out ebbing and flowing like waves. At first it was faint, a trace, but unmistakable. I silenced my book to get a stronger whiff. It was a fecund scent. Loamy and lush. It was fertile earth and bursting buds and metallic river water. It was what was to come, but also all that had ever been, and it sent me back to my childhood along the banks of this very same river. I remember it as the smell of spring mornings. That first nostril-chilling trace of the world as you open the door to the new day. It's a commonplace smell that stirs some things deep within me. So deep I cannot get to them, and yet, I know they are there. They will always be there. 

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March, 1974. Just such an early spring morning. Humboldt Avenue, our compound on the river. My brother and me with a random cat. A cat that Mrs. K. would surely catch and relocate if she caught sight of it. She was a birder. Cats eat birds. It was one of those days you bundle up in the morning and then shed layers as the day gathers steam. I distinctly remember the smell from that morning over forty years ago. It's a smell that made me feel quite a discernible way. A feeling I now know as wistfulness. It's the smell of growth and decay: some things are rotting and some things are maturing. A smell that hints of longer days, raspberry bushes bursting with fruit, dirty feet and bare arms. A smell that suggests soft breezes through open windows, Big Wheel races down a driveway that seems never ending to my 6 year old self, and walks through the gardens fragrant with irises and snap dragons and roses down to the river. The smell...it's called Promise.

But the little girl in this picture already knows that promises aren't forever or even for better. She has her first pang of nostalgia as she grasps that winter is ending and spring is coming and then it will be summer. It's the first time she thinks of her August birthday not with excitement over where the party will be, but rather with a sense of sadness that she'll be taking another turn around the sun. She doesn't know what it means to long or yearn, but she pines nonetheless. In a couple months, she'll cry herself to sleep after a candid conversation about death with her mother. Now it's not just childhood that's impermanent, but life itself. Soon she'll watch her dad disappear down the front walk a suitcase in each hand. Love can be elusive.  Some day she'll hold her mom's hand as she exhales for the last time grateful that she understood the promises of this life from such an early age.

We exchange vows and rings, we pinky swear, we cross our hearts, we put up collateral, we make pacts, we sign guarantees, we take oaths, but in the end, the only certain promise is that we are one day closer to death. Knowing this can and should inform the way we live.

Pay attention. Notice things. Stop and smell the roses, or breathe in the first spring air. Be.here.now. Fully. Only. Laugh, cry, hold hands. Forgive. Don't give up trying every day to be better than the person you were the day before. Promise me this.