“I hope she knows you only like the beginnings of things.” –Mad Men

I know that the poet said that April is the cruelest month, but spring came early this year.

I find spring difficult: the world is fragrant and new, but everything in it is fleeting and ephemeral. Winter ends but boughfuls of petals litter the ground with the first rainstorm, sad and wasted and beautiful.

All this will end with the fall, but autumn makes sadness and endings brilliant with color and urgent with crispness. Spring seems too soft somehow, too radiant, too much at once.

This spring in particular finds me mourning many things: people I held dear and those I did not hold dearly enough; past lives, past friendships, past selves; places that melodies evoke and memories pictures rekindle. Common objects suddenly point back and gesture forward with new meanings.

I found a pomegranate I’d forgotten in my fridge and broke it open to eat the way I used to when I lived in a small house with a fruit tree in the courtyard. It’s the sort of thing that should be shared. Never again will you lose a pomegranate seed; never again will the juice stain your fingers or clothes. If any fruit caused Adam and Eve to fall it was surely this one, and surely they ate it just like this.

Break open your pomegranate in a bowl of cool water

Pull apart the sections and gently loosen the seeds; only the seeds will sink

At this point it seems silly to eat them any other way than by the spoonful

With relish!