The park is in full bloom, smelling like flowers, fresh grass, and wet earth. Smelling of spring, and awakening, and hope. I’m squatting in the grass that’s already as tall as I am, pushing my flimsy paper boat with a stick down the narrow irrigation stream. The boat bobs and struggles against the rocks in the shallow stream, and I consider whether adding a sail would help the situation. I eye the leaves on the trees around me appraisingly, but it’s still early enough in the spring that the leaves aren’t quite sail-worthy yet. But the shock of purple lilac catches my eye, so I abandon the boat to its fate and head over to investigate. The flowers smell sweet and intoxicating. I bury by face in them to take it all in. And even at 7 years old the scent feels nostalgic of 7 previous springs. I examine the tiny purple flowers – finding a five-petaled bloom is good luck and makes you wishes come true. I look for one wishing for money for a lollipop – a wish that feels aspirational at the time, so when a find a flower with five tiny petals, I eat it for good measure, so as not to squander the good luck away. And the smell of the lilac is then forever imprinted in my memory, taking me back to that spring, and that park, and that paper boat in the stream.
The trees around me seem immense. At 7 years old, the world is boundlessly large, and adulthood impossibly far away. I wish it would hurry up though, particularly since mom said I could eat ice cream whenever I please when I’m an adult, but until then I will have to wait until school gets out in June. And June feels just as far away as adulthood.
I pop my head out from behind the lilac buh and examine the group of older men on the benches. Two of them are hunched over a chess board, frowning, and a small group surrounds them: some watching intently and shaking their heads, some eating sunflower seeds and enjoying the first warm spring evening in a while, most of them giving advice. One of the men at the board is my father – he’s staring at the chess pieces fiercely, his thought process imprinting in the creases on his forehead. He makes a move with one of the pieces jerkily, presses the button on top of the clock, and looks at his opponent expectantly. Is he winning or losing? I try to read the weather. Is he happy or sad? Because on this depends the success of my mission of asking him for money for a lollipop. Will he bark no, or will his anticipation of a win result in magnanimity?
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