So apparently today is my birthday. It kind of snuck up on me. I mean, Tuesday birthdays? Not entirely worth celebrating, right? Plus it's an off year. When you have a school-aged child, you learn that time speeds up in the spring, and the days grow shorter (not longer), leaving little time for reflection and self-probing as we hurtle toward the end of the school year. My head is full of thoughts and ideas as I face the coming year, but in truth, I've had no real time to make any plans or even fully formulate what I'm thinking about.

And in truth? We're keeping things low key. I've asked for it that way. I have a meeting tonight, so no birthday dinner. We'll save that for the weekend. I asked Callum to get a haircut and he did, and I asked to get my car vacummed out and Neel and Cal took it yesterday after the haircut. It's the little things, right? What I *did* do is find the poem my mom mentioned in the comments last week. It's by Thomas Wolfe, and it's quite beautiful really. It's called Spring, and since it's still National Poetry Month, you could call this my little present to you.

Spring

Autumn was kind to them,

Winter was long to them—

But in April, late April,

All the gold sang.

Spring came that year like magic,

Like music, and like song.

One day its breath was in the air,

A haunting premonition of its spirit

Filled the hearts of men

With its transforming loveliness,

Working its sudden and icredible sorcery

Upon grey streets, grey pavements,

And on grey faceless tides of manswarm ciphers.

It came like music faint and far,

It came with triumph,

And a sound of singing in the air,

With lutings of sweet bird-cries

At the break of day

And the high, swift passing of a wing,

And one day it was there

Upon the city streets

With a strange, sudden cry of green,

Its sharp knife of wordless joy and pain.

Not the whole glory

Of the great plantation of the earth

Could have outdone the glory of the city streets

That Spring.

Neither the cry of great, green fields,

Nor the song of the hills,

Nor the glory of young birch trees

Bursting into life again along the banks of rivers,

Nor the oceans of bloom in the flowering orchards,

The peach trees, the apple trees,

The plum and cherry trees—

Not all of the singing and the gold of Spring,

With April bursting from the earth

In a million shouts of triumph,

And the visible stride,

The flowered feet, of Springtime

As it came on across the earth,

Could have surpassed the wordless and poignant glory

Of a single tree in a city street

That Spring.