welcome home

today my son arrived home for a one-week spring break visit from nyu. he’s been away for his first semester of college since january. i am not sure i can put into words the transformation that has occurred in only two months. i feel as though i sent off a boy, and a man returned home. it sounds melodramatic, i know, but still the change has been significant. our friend erik, who knows our son well, said he was a pilot light waiting to be lit. it’s the perfect metaphor. i am so excited to spend this week with him–he is the same person he has always been, and still somehow entirely new at the same time. not unlike these winter stems–wholly themselves, yet different.