The dogwood tree outside my new (well, since November now) bedroom window is finally in bloom. It was slower than the others in the neighborhood due to the landscapers lopping off some of its boughs very late in the winter, and I was concerned that it might not recover from the shock this year, but it is slowly beginning to catch up with the crepe myrtle across the street which looks like someone dumped a truck full of cotton candy from the church roof. The cherry trees are nearing the end of their flowering. I find more petals on the top of my car now than I do on their boughs.

Other neighbors are putting out lawn furniture, washing their boats and camping equipment, mowing lawns. The view from my (sort-of) new kitchen table shows me spring unfolding in the center of Portland, a bit of pink and white and pale yellow against the deep evergreen hills off in the western distance.

If I walk out my front door I can see my garden planter beginning to bloom with various flowers I put there to replace the overgrown bramble it had been on my arrival. There is a pink and white dahlia, anemones in multiple colors, and petunias speckled white against a deep blue that lives up to their name of “night skies.” Sweet alyssum and basil from seed will fill in the darker parts of the box once they are bigger than the tiny green sproutlings they are now. A tulip popped up from beneath the brambles; it will not flower now, but perhaps now that it is free, it will return next spring. The part of my front yard the landscaper filled with ugly rocks revealed a number of crocuses despite the rock. They aren’t blooming anymore, but their leaves continue to shoot upward around the base of the dogwood, deep green defiance to the suffocating pavement.

There are metaphors in this spring to my life, I suspect. I don’t have enough coffee in me yet this morning to solve their depths, but for the moment, I enjoy the sun and the flowers and the Portland watching from my perch.

You know those pithy sayings about how you can’t pour from an empty cup? It occurs to me that you also can’t pour from a cup that you’ve given away.

Where to find a new one? Or just use my hands?

Happy 2019. Those years stack up. It feels like not very long ago I was seeing Blade Runner for the first time and considering its conception of 2019. Now that we made it here, it looks like we ended up with more than enough violent bleak corruption, and none of the flying cars.

Damnit, 1982.

Successfully defended my dissertation Friday morning (30 November) in Southern California. A little less than 12 hours later, I’m home in Oregon. A little less than 24 hours before, I’d arrived in a rainstorm in the desert and now I’ve come home to one in the woods.

Dr. Tamara is going to take some getting used to.

The dissertation is turned in. The defense is scheduled for the end of the month, and I’ve arranged the plane tickets for the trip down to campus. Everything has both sped up and slowed down. I moved last week, and three-quarters of the house is filled with boxes to waist height. So many things are changing. These are good changes all, and mostly a very long time in coming. I have spent so long waiting, and hoping, that I don’t quite know how to respond to being at the end of the waiting.

I hope to enjoy learning how to do that.