The azaleas bloomed first. They were an early surprise. The warm winter must have tricked them into thinking it was March, and they exploded into early color almost overnight – then were just as quickly gone. Their internal sentry said “Bloom!” and the whole hedge obeyed in a fuchsia rush.
Then nothing blossomed for weeks. Nothing.
Grief makes grey of everything, and lately it has leached most of the color from my world. But last week – the same awful week that placed a final mark of punctuation on my sadness – the lone rose bush in my backyard sprung to Technicolor life. And it hasn’t stopped blooming yet.
Most folks I know have a junk drawer, and I’m no different. The first drawer closest to the kitchen door is the one – and a not long ago, it refused to open. At first I ignored this inconvenience, but in a fairly short time I realized that although the contents of my junk drawer are a random assemblage of uncategorized “stuff”, I open it a lot. Because you never know. The odd thing I’m looking for just might be in there.
When the unavailable contents of my junk drawer began to really torment me, I stuck my head underneath the cabinet to see if I could fix the problem. The drawer had simply fallen off its “track,” and needed to be pulled out completely and set right. It took awhile, but I finally removed it.