Her Daughter's Eyes by Jessica Barksdale Inclan

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Meanwhile, spring showed up doing what spring does.  I'd been a bit busy and missed many of the details.  Or, I'd seen and heard and felt them, but forgot to log them in:  robins going mad in the morning, the Scotch broom cascading with yellow flowers, the Johnson grass growing as tall as a small green child.  I have not turned on the heater in about a week, which is always a shock because I'm always cold.  The thrushs and robins and cedar waxwings have eaten up all the ivy and privet berries, not to mention the pyracantha berries; a drunken ruckus on evening that claimed no bird to the big windows (I think that's because I haven't washed them in a while and they are dirty).

Somewhere, a wisteria has let down its purple hair and pines are dropping pounds of pollen.  Belle's marvelous mushrooms have wizened into bark and the earth has dried out (there is rain predicted for Sunday, but never mind that).

Every year, this transformation surprises me.  I've lived in the Bay Area my entire life, and yet, the green of the hills shocks me into silence.  Looking from the various balconies and decks from dozens of other people's homes during the house search, I've seen the Oakland hills, the flats stretching out toward the bay, the San Francisco skyline and surrounding Marin green.  Wow.  Wow.  That's the only word to use.  Wow.

I've always loved fall the best, but spring is a miracle of life.  No matter what, it comes, reminding us of change, even if we don't want to change, are scared to change.  Change is brutal, in its way.  All of this nature looks and sounds lovely, but the effort and energy to push out of dead earth; imagine the time clock those robins are on.  All day, all night Mary Anne.  All this focus on life, the continuation of it, the necessity for it.  And to me, it's just setting.

Somewhere about May, the hills are suddenly blonde, the robins have their nests and mates and chicks.  The sun hangs hot and high, and spring starts to leave us, going into the burn of summer.

But for now, wow.

Jessica