March 13, 2003.
Five Hundred Pink Teacups


Technically, it's a saucer magnolia. But I can see why you'd call it a tulip tree: an enormous flowering tree that is bursting into crazy bloom at this time of year in Atlanta. The saucer magnolia looks like five hundred pink teacups dancing around in the spring air.

Really, saucer magnolias are embarrassing specimens of the season. They put out blooms before they show leaves. They have no decency.

On Saturday I went looking for a tulip tree to show you. I wanted to reassure people who read this page — especially people who live in parts of the U.S. where snow is still on the ground — that spring is coming (and in fact, it's babbling like an idiot and strewing flowers!).

Here is a tulip tree for you to look at:



On Saturday I drove all over the place without spotting a tulip tree. (As you might guess, they are pretty hard to miss. Everything around them is always beige, grey, tan, brown, and then there's this big goofy pink puffball right in the middle of it all.) Finally I turned down this residential street I'd never been on and found this one. I stopped in front of the lovely little tree, which was right in the middle of a stranger's front yard. I marched up to the house and rang the bell so I could ask permission to take pictures of the tree. As I was waiting for someone to answer the door I was trying to form a plausible story in my head about why I was there. "Yeah, I keep this web journal, and I have some friends in Chicago who don't know if winter is ever going to end, and I need to take a picture of your tree as proof that spring is coming..."

Here are some more pictures of the tulip tree, just for you.










Yes, spring is coming. I have found myself looking forward to it with particular anticipation this year. What I like most about spring is that when it comes, it doesn't really hold back. It tosses petals everywhere, like everyone in the world is getting married. It's blind and reckless and beautiful and silly, and that's just how I want it to be.

One of my favorite verses of Scripture says, "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning." It seems particularly appropriate in this season of rebirth, of lost girls finally coming home, of snow starting to melt and daffodils breaking through the ice. I have to remember that promise. Even as the world mourns for the losses behind us and losses still ahead, I have to remember that darkness does not last forever. There will be joy in the morning.