A Love Letter

 *Originally posted on my Wordpress blog 04.01.2020

Hello, April!

Beautiful April. You have always been my favorite month of the year. This year is not going to be any different. I refuse to allow the COVID conversation to take away my enjoyment of your splendid days. Okay, maybe it will be different because I won’t be able to enjoy quite the whole of who you are because my travels are limited but I can still be in love with the essence of who you are.

A little background. I’m sure you know that I first started noticing you when I was a 12 year old baseball player. But I actually fell in love with you during my 15th spring. I can still remember the falling. I remember the delight I took in your evening light as I worked on that research project about Brazil. I remember how refreshing the afternoon sun felt on my face as I walked home from school that year, noting the poppies in the yards along the way. I remember the deep green of a lawn freshly revived and the sound of the lawn mower firing up for the first time in months. I fell in love with you that year but we set a date when I was 22. I was a student at SJSU that April and I was captivated by the oak trees near campus as they leafed out. I would sit on the grass between classes, watching the parade of people passing by while letting strands of waist length hair drift around my face. That was the year I actively proclaimed my love for you and crowned April 21st as my “favorite day of the year”. Why April 21st? Because that day, that year, was the epitome of April. It was a blue sky, puffy white cloud day. It was an overalls and pink tank top type day. It was a “smile at the world and the world smiles back at you” kind of day. It was my perfect day.

Every year since then, I have treasured you, April.  I have been aware of your magic. You became more magical when April 18th became our wedding day. Two years after that, our first child had a due date of April 9 but he was so comfortable in his quiet, warm space that he didn’t join us until April 23. Still, he forever made you, April, even more enchanting. Two years after his arrival, our second child had a due date of March 28. She knew my affection for you. She wanted to bring her magic to you too so she chose to make her appearance on April 8. When the kids were little, there were lovely spring birthday parties. I could feel the world reawakening from the cold winter and kid birthday parties seemed just right. Birthday cakes, sunny but not hot afternoons, kids laughing, wishes coming true - there you are, my beautiful April dream.

These days we still celebrate those family events and I cherish the time with family and friends. But I have returned to what it is that makes you MY month. It’s the renewal. It’s the blue sky days with a hint of a breeze and the promise of hot summer days ahead. It’s the neighborhood, alive with wisteria and pansies, apple blossoms and roses, and people out for a walk or a bike ride. It’s putting the winter fully asleep for eight or nine months and allowing myself to wake up and feel alive.

COVID is not going to stop those things from happening. Yes, apparently it’s going to limit my beach visits. It’s going to make those family celebrations smaller and tinged with sadness as we continue tolerating too much physical distance. It’s not fair. I didn’t ask for this. But that doesn’t mean I can’t still salvage some of my April joy. I’ll be finding it in my morning walks. I’ll find it in a few bike rides and in the rustling of the oak tree leaves in the backyard. I’ll find it in the early evening light and in the memories of Aprils gone by. I will find a way, if only just once, to steal a walk on a beach somewhere and lose my self in the blue line where water meets sky.  I’ll look for April joy on-line, in the Twitter #FlowerReport and the celebration of you, April, as the National Poetry Month (how fitting!). I may even look for it in some kind of virtual April although, honestly? I need the real deal. No exclusively cyberspace April for me. No. I need to feel your softness, April.  I need to be wrapped in your perfect 70 degree temperatures and your puffy white clouds. I need to smell your lilac perfume and  I need to hear the kids playing in your days.  I want to see the poppies and the roses, and I want to feel the Pacific Ocean wash over my toes. You are real, April. You are my month.  I would be bereft without you.