Bearing Witness

2020

This spring, for the first time, I’ve watched the season change. And not just in the, ‘oh, it’s summer’ way that seems to happen typically. But in a way that feels like I could have pinpointed each incremental change in the tree outside my window from one day to the next.

The day of my first auction from home, the buds had barely begun to come out. I worried about them in the late snow. During the next, I watched petals fly past the window in between lots. All too quickly, the bright green of new leaves hardened off into the deeper green of summer.

But, it wasn’t enough to watch this happen outside my window. The fact that my apartment doesn’t have any outdoor space started to feel like an ache I carried around with me.

I needed to live with these new signs that life was still moving forward. So, I started small. A tulip plucked from an overgrown garden. No one else would notice, but I smiled every time I saw it, and moved it with me throughout the day. I started to photograph, hoping I could make up for the moments that had already come and gone. I took a handful of dandelions that I tried to protect from the wind as I rushed home. Next, lilacs. Armfuls at time, a bouquet in every room. Then, I took branches of dogwood, and I learned that their white petals are really leaves, drawing in pollinators to bunches green and yellow flowers. And now the clover. Sitting next to the bumble bees, I comb through the patches, searching for anomalies, luck, signs of hope.

These photographs are my mile markers: proof that this year, I observed.