2025 Spring Fling Contest Entry

I am participating in Ciara O’Neal and Kaitlyn Leann Sanchez’s SpringFlingKidlit contest.

Special thanks to the organizers for this incredible opportunity. Thanks also to the prize contributors for such exciting potential rewards!

In the last year, our little family went through a massive sewage flood--and a loss of material things, loss of use of our house, and massive and intrusive construction for a year. Over the same time period, we lost my dad. There was a lot of personal destruction. Although we live in New England, I know far too many people who were impacted by the LA wildfires over the same time period. More destruction.

For me, spring is about rebirth, reawakening, and renewing hope after long, dark, New England winters. Like so many families post-wildfire, we have slowly been rebuilding our spaces--indoors and outdoors--and our family bubble, in the wake of sadness.

As part of our rebuilding, we have had to replant the basics--grass! flowers!--after construction and/or flood destroyed them. My kids have been a part of this every step of the way, and we have planted some seeds in the fall (hoping for them to take root then) and some seeds now, in the spring. We happen to have a good amount of stone--a stone wall, patio stones, etc--and when my littles have lost seed between the cracks, there have been some tears. We all feel the responsibility and urgent need to cultivate a new space.

I like to think about those little seeds, about whom a little being has shed tears, and how maybe, they feel the love, the care, and the continued worry... and they sprout anyway.

Because even in the darkest of places...

hope blooms.