The Fragility of Life, the American Experiment, and Cherry Blossoms
In 2016, my mother and I were in Washington D.C. for the peak of the cherry blossoms on Easter Sunday morning, almost a year after her diagnosis with terminal cancer. She loved festivals of flowers and lived in nearby Baltimore, but the peak of the cherry blossoms had eluded us until that day. The peak of the blossoms dances unpredictably around the spring calendar from mid-March to mid-April, defying all efforts by the National Park Service to pinpoint its arrival. The blossoms are fragile, easily knocked down by spring rain and wind. You can come just a few days after the peak and find bare branches, black and wet with a carpet of castaway petals on the ground. Unlike the fragile blossoms, my mother, after a year of surgeries and chemo, seemed remarkably resilient, ready to walk around the full 2- to 3-mile Tidal Basin loop ringed with almost 4,000 cherry trees.
We took a taxi before dawn to the site of the Japanese Stone Lantern on the edge of the basin, directly across from the Jefferson Memorial. My mother brought a Bible to read at dawn — the passage about the three women who discovered Jesus’ empty tomb on the first Easter Sunday. Since I left home at 15, she had become more religious and I less so. She would always pray for me.
The two-ton stone lantern, like the original cherry trees, was given to the United States as a symbol of Japanese-American friendship. The trees arrived in 1912, three decades before Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but the stone lantern, offered by Japan in 1921, waited out World War II in Tokyo. This was not the only touch of irony on display. Panels on the nearby Jefferson Memorial declared our third president’s passionate objection to every form of tyranny, though he owned hundreds of slaves. The newest monument on the basin, a 30-foot Martin Luther King Jr. in snow-white granite, crossed his arms, gazed out at it all and said “True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.”
At 6 a.m., we shared the shore with only a handful of serious photographers who had set up tripods and high-powered lenses to catch their own classic image of sunrise on the Jefferson through a perfect waterfall of pink cherry blossoms. The blooms themselves did not disappoint: voluptuous, cotton candy, fireworks in pinks and white. By 9 a.m., every square inch of the Tidal Basin was packed. Photographers were lined up on little slices of shore, pressed close to each other, vying for shots that could erase the other people inconveniently sharing the scene. Couples immortalized their engagements with kisses under the trees and close-up shots of their gold rings arranged on a “just one, it can’t hurt” plucked blossom. Women modeled kimonos for professional photographers who had set up complex rigging and lighting umbrellas for others to trip over. A Ronald McDonald look-alike with full-clown makeup and big red shoes posed with the tall needle of the Washington Monument in the background.
I offered my mother my arm as we moved among the crowd and over the roots of trees and photography equipment. I stopped often to take pictures and she waited patiently. Unlike the professional photographers, I found myself focusing on, rather than avoiding, shots of the other people sharing our morning. On Easter Sunday, with a backdrop of iconic landmarks, there was a fascinating cross-section of America itself. An Indian woman positioned her two young boys in the grass and took many shots of their smiles. An African-American family wore matching outfits: suits, dresses and elaborate Easter hats. Two small Asian women juggled a selfie-stick and the leashes of two enormous dogs, their heads reaching almost to the women’s shoulders. A young man wearing a yarmulke, the tassels of his prayer shawl emerging from his windbreaker and hanging down over his jeans, offered to take a group picture for a family of four so they could be in the shot together.
Easter Sunday with my mother during the peak of the cherry blossoms was a one-time event, an odd aligning of circumstances, a strange mix of sacred symbols and irony, optimism and opportunism. In the spring of 2017, I returned to catch the cherry blossoms again in a Washington D.C. transformed in just one year by colder winds. My mother had chemo a few days before I arrived and wasn’t feeling up to joining me. She died that November, the day after Thanksgiving.
Four years later, I sit at home as a pandemic spreads and I think of the world that was in March 2016. I think of the couples and families and friends we saw around the Tidal Basin that Easter Sunday and wonder how they are today, what the future holds for all of us. I think of cancer, and viruses, and a carpet of fallen white petals. I think of the tenuous ties that bind us together, of what we defend against all odds and of what we let slip through our fingers. I think of resurrection and the chance we will have to fight for a new kind of future when the current forced pause has passed. I think of the fragility of life, the American experiment and cherry blossoms.
