You come home, and you choose what to bring back with you. Maybe you unplug Friday evenings, or shave your armpits every forty days. Now you drive a stick-shift. Now you speak another tongue. Now you only toast when your eyes lock over a glass.
This weekend, my first back in America, I went to Sakura Matsuri, the Cherry Blossom Festival at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The objective of hanami (花見), the Japanese tradition of flower viewing, is the appreciation of beauty, but the undercurrent—the reason for its longevity, its spiritual resonance—is transience.
You return from the road, and if you’re lucky, you made more friends than you lost. If you’re lucky, the road taught you what home could not. When it’s time to come home, if you’re lucky, you’re ready to be here.
Spring in Burgundy was yellow: daffodils and fields of colza (which in English we more unpleasantly call rapeseed). Spring in Brooklyn, where not gray, is a hundred shades of pink. Spring anywhere is short.
Still young when I reach the island, I am thinking of Cavafy. I wonder what wisdom can be won in a year. I wonder what I missed.
You come home, you choose what to bring back with you, and if you’re lucky, you come home when the cherry blossoms bloom.
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