how many ways to say "love."

the days leading up to easter have especially beautiful to me this year. i have felt held by the sweetness of that spring gathering ritual in a mother's life: the easter basket. this year it's a small wooden bunny, a stacking rainbow, a book, and a ukulele, nestled together in play silks i dyed myself. all well- and thoughtfully made things for him to discover with his mind and hands, all things our family will use and treasure for many years.

i have been aching to work with my hands of late, and francis adores the play silks we use in his music class each week. i love how they can be anything, anything! the steam of a rolling train. soup to stir in a bowl. grass to feed sheep. costumes. flags of a ship or a parade. truly, what minds can imagine, play silks can become. making our very own set has been such a joy for me to labor over these past few days, from reading about the simple, natural dyeing process and what plant matter yields which color, to awaiting white silks in the post and trodding that sacred ground where patience and time meet earth's offerings and my own two hands.

working with turmeric and beets and black beans, hibiscus and chlorophyll and kale -- holding jarfuls of color up to the light -- dipping, rinsing, considering, drying, perhaps dipping again -- always finding a job for my eager boy's hands...the process was one i hope he forever sees and knows me by: curious ideas made manifest, rhythms of my hands, movements of my body at work in the kitchen and over our table, sacred columns of light, a mother's joyful handiwork, a mother always, ever, seeking lessons and meaning, a mother lost in joy of being alive.

and what i have sought and gathered like a spring bouquet, these bright days of easter week: the threads of god's love and grace and eternity i see and experience, every day, in my motherhood. how the ritual of repurposing plants and watching silks drink color and and noticing the change in the tree just beyond the window is itself a lesson in new life -- is, holy and wholly, a poem of rebirth.

how soft a petal is.

on our evening walk under the cherry blossoms in central park, under clouds holding tight to the rain (baby bringing me fallen petals on legs wobbly like a just-born deer, husband looking back at me with joy in his eyes, my own knees dusted with dirt in that way of a mama so wondrously in love), my beautiful boys utterly broke my heart. 

to see the blossoms bloom.

year after year, our weekend in d.c. arrives on the wings of spring. by now we've lost count of how many years this makes -- four? -- and each tuft of blossoms greets us sweeter than the last. if last year's memories sing of our earliest weeks of parenthood and francis' first laugh (and the year before that: of hope for our very baby, come down from the stars), this year the pitter-pat of very first steps upon earth is the only thing we could hear. 

we delighted in our best loved spots 'round town (blueberry pancakes at eastern market, supper at founding farmers, swooning over roses and rowhouses on capitol hill, pitango gelato, wawa coffee for the drives to and fro) and made new checks on our ever-growing list (district doughnut, the national museum of african american history and culture). mostly we marveled at this sparkling thought: year after year, our weekend in d.c. arrives on the wings of spring, some years in april and others in march, but always just exactly as the blossoms bloom to burst, as though they know how we treasure them as tokens of time, as though they know we've come all this way just for them.