Beech Tree News Network

If I ever run off the road while I’m driving, it will be in the spring.  At that time of year, I’m so excited to see everything come back to life, and that includes people, as well as vegetation and wildlife.  There’s so much to see in the spring.  My neighbors are mowing their yards, turtles are crossing the road, squirrels are jumping from tree to tree, rabbits are playing dodge tire with passing motorists (and mostly losing), and everything is blooming or leafing out.
If you see me driving in the spring, you’ll see my lips moving and assume that I’m talking on one of those hands-free devices.  You’ll be wrong, of course.  I’ll be talking to myself or God or sometimes, to animals trying to decide whether or not they can dart across the road before I get there.
It is a curious conversation, in both senses of the word: strange and inquisitive.  Why are her lilacs purple-er than everybody else’s? I ask.  I bet it’s something in the soil, I answer.  Wait, maybe it’s a genetically-altered lilac, I conjecture.
Further down the road, a squirrel sits at the edge of the pavement then assumes the sprinting position.  Don’t do it! I tell him.  He listens.  A few miles later a rabbit doesn’t.  No bunny!  No bunny!  No bunny!  No!   I’m yelling, but he’s not listening.  I flinch as I am unable to brake and swerve in time.  I feel the bump that is now its lifeless body.  At least turtles move slow enough that my car can straddle them.  I comfort myself with this information.  The tortoise and the hare—once again the outcome in favor of the tortoise. 
I see a bush with small yellow flowers.  The blooms look like miniature carnations or maybe small roses in full bloom.  How is it possible that I am 57 years old and have never seen that flower? I ask.  I make a mental note to look it up in my flower book when I get home.
Suddenly, I am distracted by breaking news on the radio.  More children have been mindlessly killed.  I pray for my own family.  Please keep them safe, I say to God, as I name them one by one.  They are all I have.  They were all their families had—the children who were mindlessly killed.  How do you go on after losing a child? I wonder out loud.  I think about a friend of my brother, who lost a son to the ocean.  “I will never have another good day,” he said.  I see how he could say that.  I would never again either.  “All we have is this moment,” modern-day philosophers tell us.  “The sanctity of the present moment,” my sister calls this mindset.
I pull into my own driveway.  I’ve made it home safely once more.  I admire my white azaleas as I pull up to my house.  Now, why isn’t my clematis blooming? I ask.  Everybody else’s is.  Of course, I smile to myself.  It is mine, tended by my own hand.  Like me, it is a bit out of step.  Its timing has never been—well—on time.  It will bloom, I assure myself, just like I will.