Green

The other day I was driving Little Dude home from preschool when he mentioned something about holding a clover in his hand. For some reason that triggered a memory from my life when I was the same age. I can vividly remember sitting on my lawn in March, hunting for clovers. The grass was soft and slightly slippery, the air rich with the scent of dirt. Many of my memories from my early childhood are similarly vivid recollections of my time outside, close to the ground and the plants. Then I looked around remembered that March in Utah means that things are still barren, brown, and cold. In California, March is the greenest month. Winter rains bring a wash of green to the hills and make the grass and flowers lush. I felt a little pang at the fact that my children do not have the same childhood experiences that I had--the same freedom to explore outside year-round. I miss California most in January; it's not the warm, sunshine of summer that I miss, but the cool, green, misty winters

I also realized that I have now lived in Utah for nearly as long as I ever lived in California. We bought a home here. I have a Utah driver's license. My three children were born here. For many years I spent a lot of time thinking about (and talking about) moving somewhere else. I do still miss the ocean. But I love looking out the window each day to a view of snow-covered mountains. I love that view in the spring when the mountains turn a fuzzy green, in the summer when they begin to brown, and in the fall when for a few weeks they blaze orange and yellow. I need to spend more time getting to know my new home in the physical, sensory way that I knew California as a young child. I think I also need to get my children to spend more time outside in it as well. Even if it is cold here in March; that's why coats were invented. After so many years here I'm finally making peace with the fact that green may be optional and that outwear is often not.