My mother once said that when I grew older, I would prefer Easter to Christmas. As it has turned out, I still love Christmas — it spangles the darkest month of the year! — and no longer observe Easter. Springtime itself is the resurrection I celebrate. Today would have been my mother’s sixty-third birthday, and it was glorious: the sun warm, the sky cloudless, and all over the city, the magnolia trees in full bloom … “In arriving not an atom is added … In departing not a particle is lost …” wrote my teacher in the capping verse to a koan. I wish I knew what that means.
