“Frothy” with a Side of Inspiration

One thing you should know about me is I love spring. And being outdoors. And all the beautiful colors in the natural world. At this time of year, I most love trees with blossoms.

You know the ones I’m talking about. Trees with pink blossoms that look like cotton candy and trees with fluffy white blossoms that look like popcorn balls. When the blossoms get all thick on these trees, my word to describe them is “frothy.”

Isn’t that perfect? Frothy as in full of or overflowing with something foamy, bubbly, etc. My boyfriend’s been teasing me about that ever since I said it, but I stand by my word choice. I will also literally stand under or near one of these frothy trees and just stare at it, drinking in how beautiful and colorful and wonderful it is. I know some people complain about these trees’ smell, but I have virtually no sense of smell, so—more froth for me!

Aside from loving the blossoms for their aesthetic gorgeousness, I also love them because they herald the arrival of spring. Spring! As someone with seasonal depression who hates the cold, dark, gray cloud/white snow/brown slush winter, I love nothing more than seeing these candy-pink and popcorn-white announcements of a warmer, brighter time of year.

So that brings us to this year and to what I’ve learned this spring via my blossoms. Because of COVID-19, we’ve got a stay-at-home directive in Utah, which means I don’t go anywhere anymore. I work from home, I take walks to the park, and when I’m feeling really adventurous, I drive a couple of miles up the road so I can vary my running routes.

A few weeks ago, it had been a long day at work and I was super ready for my daily post-work walk. The park is the normal destination, but today, I needed something more. The usual half-mile walk turned into more like a three-mile walk (whoops).

But along the way, I noticed the trees. They were blossoming! But not full blossoms, just spotty ones, here and there. Other trees were already full of leaves. Crap! Did I miss my blossoms? DID I MISS SPRING??

(Side note here: it’s very easy to miss both spring and fall in Utah. On a given year, they might only last 2–3 weeks. So if something happens to make you stay in your house all the time—I’m looking at you, coronavirus!—it’s totally possible to miss a good chunk of the season.)

In my crusade to figure out if spring had already happened, I started trying to pay attention on my morning runs. And since frothy blossoms are my favorite spring thing, you’d think it would be super easy to pay attention to whether they were around or not.

But it wasn’t. It was surprisingly difficult, and here’s why. When I run, I look down at the ground ahead of me to make sure I know where I’m running. And then I go on autopilot and just keep looking down and focusing on what I’m dealing with right then—my pace, landing on the right part of my foot, how much pain I’m in, etc. So now, even when I’d tell myself at the start of a run that I was going to look for my frothy blossoms, once I got running, it was hard to remember to do it.

Well, long story short, I found spring eventually on my runs and my drives around town. And now that I know the froth is there, I try to pay attention to it whenever I’m outside. But here’s what I learned: with everything going on in the world and our lives, especially right now with coronavirus making life uncertain and unfamiliar, it’s easy to get stuck looking down. We focus on the problems ahead of us, problems that are important and immediate (like me watching out for where I’m running), and because of that, forget to look up and see the beautiful, happy things that make life worth living. For me, one of those things is blossom froth.

So while on the one hand, I just wanted an excuse to talk about frothy blossoms, on the other, I also want to invite my readers to look up this weekend. It’s Easter weekend, which makes this post especially meaningful to me because it reminds me to look up to my Savior, Jesus Christ.

(Side note here: Not all of you reading may be Christian or religious, but I hope that it’s okay for me to express things that are meaningful to me and know that you’ll take what you can from my thoughts without feeling offended or excluded if you don’t connect with a particular thought or belief.)

With that said, I love blossoms! I love spring! Whatever you love, I hope you can find some more of it to brighten your life. Happy Easter!