Pink

Pink is emerging from the branches and tips of every bare tree on the landscape. Its soft presence is like a balm, a promise, color is coming soon. As we moved along in the freezing March, I kept straining my eyes for buds, then trying to soften my focus to perceive that fist moment when the blush of new life spreads over every surface. And it came. Then, up close on the apple tree, I could touch them. Little leathery buds, inconspicuous with only the tiniest hint of the softness still hidden within.

It got me thinking about pink. Much maligned by the parents tired of the onslaught of gilrie things direct marketed toward their female children, pink has a bad reputation. The pink polyester princess costumes and scratchy ballerina tutus are like a pink on steroids, it is abrassive and synthetic. But before we, feminist moms and tom boy loving dads, try and hide pink in the back of the closet let us revisit this marvelous color.

Pink. Pink champagne. Pink currants. Pink apple blossoms. Pink cheeks after a nap. Holding hands, pink palm to pink palm. These are some pinks that make your heart soften. Pinks that signal the softest most fleeting moments of a life, of a season.

Here’s to a toast to early, early spring and her first pink blush, her slow, modest arrival, before she belts out with her full clear voice, Here I am. Here is to a pink for our girls if they like it, and our boys, that is lovely and imaginative and of their making. Here is to a pink that is far from the mall and closer to an apple blossom. Here is to pink.

The recipe is an idea I have in my pocket and eagerly await: inviting our friends, opening a bottle of Pinot Noir champagne under the flowering apple tree when it blooms, and pausing from our busy lives under the canopy of flowers. I can already hear the bees droning and the children laughing in the pasture, running, grass between their toes.