In 1951 my parents drove from Illinois to California so that my father could go to war. My father had already fought in World War II not even 10 years before, leaving college to enter the army at age 18. Now my father was a college graduate, a husband, and a father, and he was off to Korea.

My parents speak of this time with great fondness. They'd been married just a few years, and their lives were wrapped up in James, as we all are with out first child. It was a great adventure to drive across the country, to visit the Mojave Desert and the Continental Divide, to touch the Pacific Ocean. My mother was sending her husband off to war. It is what women did.

My father is 83 years old now, my mother 81, and James will be 58 in July. In the evenings when my parents tell stories, though, they remember every detail: the rickety hotels, the sound of the ocean, the sifting of sand between their fingers.

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Yesterday my third brother (the second one from the left, top row, in the picture) and his wife celebrated their 27th wedding anniversary. I remembered around midday that it was their anniversary, and of course I started thinking, then, about where we all are 27 years later. My grandmothers both died when I was in college. The baby in the picture, Esther, belongs to my second brother, John (the bearded guy) and his wife, Sharon (in pink). Esther is now a mama herself. And both of those brothers are now grandfathers, which means, of course, that my parents are now great-grandparents. My fourth brother, Stephen (the one closest to me in the picture) was married last summer in the most perfect wedding. My Uncle Max is the white-haired man in the photo, the bachelor uncle who took care of my grandmother until she died.

And then there's me. Don't I look rather grumpy in this photo? My brother Stephen does, too. Perhaps we were arguing. In this photo I was 15, nearing the end of my freshman year in  high school. I was  newly dating Bryan, my first boyfriend, as I would continue to do off-and-on for another two years or more. In just six years down the road, Bryan would die in a car accident, and I would begin growing up, swamped in reality and struggling hard to breathe.

Here, though, I'm probably thinking about how great my hair looked and how cute my brother's groomsman Greg was. I'm probably thinking about getting a tan and counting down the days until I could see Bryan again. If I could have known what was coming up in 6 years, then I would also know that, after that year of pain, my life became full of one blessing after another. I think I would have been smiling perpetually.

(Thanks for all of you who left a comment on my "who-are-you post" yesterday! I must say that nearly all of you were unknown readers to me. If you are reading this and didn't comment yesterday, please go here and just say, "I read your blog!" That would make me warm and happy.)

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When Jesse was a Cub Scout, many years ago, Randy was our pack's Cubmaster. He resumed the Cubmaster job this year when Duncan entered Cub Scouts, and last week was the end-of-the-year pack meeting and crossing-over ceremony, during which the 5th-grade Cub Scouts cross-over into Boy Scouts. It's a beautiful ceremony, and it was one of those times when I'm acutely aware that my children are growing up. It's hard to fathom, really, but it was just four years ago that my lanky, curly-haired teenager was the sweet new Boy Scout in the photo above. So much changes in four years in the life of a child. From two-to-six: toddler to reader, three word sentences to a rich and varied vocabulary. From seven-to-11: Green Eggs and Ham to Lord of the Rings. From 11 to 15: eight inches of height, eight inches of hair, and an even more extensive vocabulary. Grapes of Wrath and the ACT.

But still the same kind, funny young man, with the gentle smile and green eyes. Moving now, closer to Eagle Scout. And now he's the one welcoming this new Boy Scout into the troop, putting on the new neckerchief and epaulettes.

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I love to see what's popping up in the flower gardens. We were so blessed upon moving to our house eight years ago to find flower beds well-stocked with lilies, daffodils, irises, and azaleas. But in spite of the abundance of these perennials, we still have huge spaces to fill with more plants. Every year I've split and  replanted bulbs, and every year I add a few new flowers. Year by year, I'm seeing the once empty spaces blooming. Those purple columbine that the kids are behind in this picture (taken about five years ago when the kids were 2, 4, and 9)  is now thick in that particular flower bed. It'll be a mass of color later this week; the first few are just opening up today. Those irises have been moved elsewhere; two rosebushes now fill in that area. It's always a work in progress.

Spring thrills me. The theme of growing things--of immersing oneself in this beautiful, verdant creation-- plays prominently within my own writing.

From a poem called "Letter to the Man I Didn't Marry":

From the front porch swing
I watched the librarian fly by on her bike
like the wicked witch and the irises rise
inch by inch.  I am itching
to get my hands in the soil, to smell
the dirt caked thick and dark
beneath my nails.  You were wrong,
you know.  You never could have been the one
to heal me.

From "Seventeen Hours, Give or Take":

Two hours to go
and we are easy again
as if some lethal spell
has been lifted.  We unzip

our stiff suits
at the state line
and toss them out the window.
Our skin beneath is warm

and smells greenly of wood.
We can’t stop breathing.

From "The Botanist and His Wife":

Back home he kills plants.  First day of spring,
He sends the philodendron and African violet out
to sun on the porch, imagining their chloroplastic ecstasy.
Instead their leaves are scorched, crisp
as potato chips around the edges.

Indeed, I am inspired boundlessly by this abundant good earth. So are many other poets. Do a google search for "spring poetry" and see what you can find, and then join my Spring Poetry Contest!

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My sweet niece Ellen turns 26 tomorrow. That's her above with my Uncle Max. I confess that I do not actually remember the day that Ellen was born as I do with my other nieces and my oldest nephew. I remember details about the other births, but I cannot find anything in my memory about Ellen's birth. Ellen and her parents (my brother Peter and his wife Nancy) lived in Tennessee then, and I was still in high school in New York. We came down to see our new baby during my spring break, so she would have been just a month old. Still, I have no memories of that time period. Later, though, when I came to college in Tennessee, I spent lots of time with my sweet Ellen Ann. I used to babysit every Thursday evening so that Peter and Nancy could go on a date; in exchange I got to do my laundry at their house. That was a sweet deal. One year I sewed tiny clothes for Ellen's Barbies. I was a good aunt.

And Ellen, no doubt, will be a wonderful mama. She is due today with her first baby. Fifteen years ago I, too, waited in March for the birth of my first son. Those details I have not forgotten: the baby's room all ready, the hospital bag packed, the mixture of fear and eagerness. At any moment, your life about to change in ways that cannot be imagined in all the 9 months of preparation.

**So I've spent the last 15 minutes trying to find a fabulous, inspirational quote about new motherhood. But my own little people are running amok, asking for supper and snacks and, and Randy's just come home and the dog is going wild, and my mother comes over to tell me news about Ellen (which is no news), and my brother calls, and so this is the only quote that seemed appropriate:

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Do you ever have those days when being a grown-up is just really not fun? Those days when you have to talk to crazy people; when you have to be all serious and responsible with your teenager; when the cat and dog try to trip you everywhere you go; when you have to fold laundry, wash dishes, and feed the kids? Sometimes I just don't feel like doing it all. See this picture above? That's what I want to be doing: climbing on a rickety ladder onto a rickety swing set with my childhood friends Kim and Karen. Watching my brother Stephen flip over the bar. See that first tree in the yard--the one with the nearly horizontal trunk? Probably next we were headed over to hang out in that tree. We spent a lot of time in that tree. We weren't thinking about all the things we had to do before we could go to bed. We were mostly wondering if we should play house or baby dolls or Barbies. At the worst, we might have been wondering if Dawn McNamara was going to come and throw our Barbies in the creek again.

This is what we have to make sure of: that our children have a solid store of good memories on which to draw. That they can remember the smell of a wet day and the feel of a tree trunk on their palms. That they can look at an old photograph and almost remember the comfort of that very ordinary day.

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It's possible that I obsess too much about snow. Perhaps I only lament the lack of snow because I am safe here in the South, knowing that any small amount of snow we get will be but a morning of magic, melted by noon. But likely I am obsessed with snow because I grew up in snow country, and I have pangs of panic realizing that my children will never know the agony of yanking off mittens, pulling off boots, unzipping a coat, unzipping a snowsuit, and pulling down jeans and long underwear in a sweat of anxiety because you are about to pee your pants. (Because you didn't really go to the bathroom when your mother said, "Make sure you use the bathroom before you go out to play!") How can they possibly build character without a neighborhood snowball fight, wondering if  Peter van Opdorp and Michelle W. have once again loaded the snowballs with rocks? How can they learn determination and stamina without trailing behind a group of adult skiers who think you are perfectly capable of skiing for miles at age 6? How can they ever truly understand the thrill of agony without flying full speed into a tree and then rebounding into a barbed-wire fence while sledding?

Today we have a torrential rainfall. The streets are gushing with rain and yards are flooded. On a  day like today I like to imagine the temperature 40 degrees colder and fat flakes falling from the sky. Snow in February is so much cozier than a winter rain.

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Christmas Eve, seven years ago, I remember being at Christmas Eve service at church, absolutely filled to capacity: with abundant joy, the thrill of anticipation, and apprehension. I also felt a tremendous kinship with Mary, and, like Mary, I was treasuring all these things in my heart.

And I was thinking, "I'm not really going to have this baby on Christmas Day, am I?"

I wonder why I was so opposed to having a baby on Christmas Day. It makes the day all the more special. And the picture above was actually taken on New Year's Eve,  Duncan's first night home. I can still smell that sweet baby. And I'm still pondering in my heart and treasuring.

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