My sixth-grader and her class visited the middle and high school yesterday, dipping in their 12-year-old toes for next year’s migration from the crayon-scented world of elementary school to the locker-walled hallways.

Her sister, hanging out in art class, gave her a glazed blueberry donut.

Later that night, walking through the halls with the kids and my friend, I remember my own adolescent claustrophobic years, calling my high school “the cannery” as I felt like a fish parched for wild waters.

As a sprig of forsythia in a vase greets visitors into my kitchen these days, that donut likely welcomed my daughter into the next phase of schooling. Sweet….

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me…..

From “Instructions on Not Giving Up” By Ada Limón