This spring, on my daily morning dog walk, there was a purple tree in the woods. I think it’s been there every year, but this was the first time I really noticed it.

Each morning when the sun was out, I’d try to capture it: the blooms, its contrast with the trees around it, how the light filtered in and around it. None of my photos did it justice.

I’d look forward to seeing it every morning. Perhaps today was the day when the light would hit it just so.

And then, a few weeks of rainy mornings.

When I finally made my way back to the woods, it was gone.

It wasn’t just that the purple blooms had fallen off. In the midst of the green lushness of early spring, I wasn’t even sure which tree it was.

How impossible that something that was the focal point of my mornings could disappear. It could fade and become just another tree.

Lately there have been things I’ve been carrying with me that I’ve deeply wanted—sentence after sentence that starts with “If only…”

And then some of them come to pass, in part or in full, and the joy I expected to feel fades as quickly as that purple tree.

I’m working on it, though.

Working on letting that thing that was special, that thing that would make all the difference—I’m working on experiencing the joy, or the relief, or ease, that I’d been looking forward to for so long.