Hope Peeks Through

The lessons of spring's first flowers.

Starting in September 2022, I began a year-long floral self-portrait series to document my first year in New York. This is the March entry, “Hope Peeks Through.”

Early spring is always a tease. I’ve gone on many walks this season, at the beginning of March, with only my ratty housecoat that leaks feathers. From the cursory glance out my bedroom window, all looks well and inviting. Blue skies, not a cloud to behold, the branches of the trees tranquil, not a rustle. I step outside, and sunshine kisses my skin, a greeting of  warmth and good tidings as I amble down my block for an afternoon walk. Then, I come to the cross walk and a bitter, late-winter wind ruffles my hair, as if to say, “gotcha.”

Other days are gray, as if yesterday’s sunshine meant nothing at all. I find that April creeps nearer, but spring is hardly reflected in my wardrobe. My ankle-length wool coat billows in the bitter wind that rushes down the High Line, threatening to tip skyscrapers—and me. But it is here, amongst the late frost, that I see the first flowers break ground: crocus, daffodils, dogwood flying in the breeze.

There’s something enormously encouraging about seeing things so fragile triumph through muddy, frozen ground. It’s an oxymoron of harsh ice and vibrant yellows and violet dressed in suave, smooth leaves and stems. That such delicate features can emerge, unscathed, from something so unforgiving is a beautiful mystery.

I’ve been trying to take a page from the early spring flowers: fighting to take root and bloom, in less than optimal, even foreign and difficult, conditions. Eight months in the city  have simultaneously crawled by and whizzed over my head. I find myself in the middle of everything, without really knowing how I began. In the middle of this new job, in the middle of (trying to) make friends, in the middle of New York, which is, by far, the most chaotic locale I have ever inhabited. It all went from zero to 100, a bit like the first blooms.

For weeks, even though the calendar says the spring equinox has most definitely passed, there is hardly anything perceptible. The next moment, you’re walking by a line of crocus flowers or a dogwood tree positively sagging under the weight of its own blooms and you have no idea how they got there. Similarly, I’ve been trudging through the weeks, trying to make friends, meet people, and be settled. Now, it seems, my own efforts I planted are starting to sprout as acquaintances pile up, and I struggle to figure out how I will manage them all. 

Spring is always a promise of renewal, that life and hope and joy still exist in a topsy-turvy, strange, broken world. Seeing these mighty, pioneering blooms always reassured me that somehow, in some way, I’ll be alright, too, if I just keep reaching for the sun.

** Branches clipped from the pier in Williamsburg, and some neighboring trees.