I was a flower girl once. Technically, twice.

Once at my mother’s wedding to my brother’s father. Once at my dad’s wedding to my step-mom.

In the latter, it is late May. I am seven. There is video evidence of me, standing next to my dad, stone-faced and wearing a very of-the-times floral print dress. I am covertly slinging rose petals at my new step-sister who is not quite two years younger than me and wearing a matching floral dress. This is in an attempt to get her to stop looking around and be serious in this Very Serious Moment. This is me trying to spare her from my own lessons in Not Being Serious during Very Serious Moments. (Reader, no one at this wedding was concerned or even noticed except for me.)

In the former, it is early May. I am four. I can’t remember what I wore (a white dress and frilly socks?). But I vividly remember lying down in the grass in front of the tiny church. It was unseasonably warm, the entire lawn carpeted with downy seed pods of dandelions. I thought if I laid down gently they would hold me up, weightless, cradled. Baba would find me supine in the weeds, and quickly, firmly tell me to get up. I might get grass stains on my dress. I might distract from this Very Serious day.

The contrast of these two spring days isn’t something I’ve thought about.

What I do think about is how I thought–no I just knew–the dandelions could support the weight of my physical body. There were so many of them. The common sense physics of a four year old had me convinced that seeds and stems could hold me up, weightless above the ground. I can still close my eyes and see blue sky and fluffy clouds above me; white dandelion puffs below me; sun on my face. Even as I was not held, but rather flattening a body-shaped patch, I was transported.

Today, my neighborhood is abloom. Finally. After false-springs intertwined with flurries. Alternating warm days and overnight freezes, it is time. Forsythia, first on the scene, have been testing the conditions, signaling to the crocus when it’s safe to join. Once the early swaths of daffodils emerge, a grand finale freeze will follow, after which hyacinth will get the all clear. Bluebells and lily of the valley will emerge in a tangle, stretching out below pink-clad redbud and snowy dogwood trees.

When the tulips arrive, it’s time to party. In every color and variation they line up boastfully. Entire trees are draped heavy with magnolia blooms. Hostas and ferns shoot up from the earth, eager and ready to unfurl new leaves into familiar patterns.

However beautiful, it is a Deeply Unserious Time. Displays erupt, often overnight, with the confidence of a pack of girls (women) wearing Cute Outfits, chattering down the street. A sexy party where everyone looks incredible at midnight, only to be sodden by 2 a.m. Showy, fleeting parades of colors and shapes, littering sidewalks with the fallen confetti of their efforts. A hangover of bruised petals. It is frenzied, it is fleeting. It is fun.

Think about it: spring as the beat drop. After much anticipation, it is what we’ve waited for: this boisterous arrival, an invitation to release, a call to get a little weird. A time when everything shoots its shot, potentially with poor timing as it has been an entire year and we are all out of practice. A time when a surprise cold snap threatens progress but no! we can not turn around. And we, seekers of warmer days, utterers of “any day now,” drink it up. We parade in our Cute Outfits, wistfully leaving jackets at home, wishing later we hadn’t. We flock to patios and patches of grass, cheerful admissions that it is “still a little chilly but warm in the sun.” We snap photos of the spring, of each other, all in bloom. The signal that we made it, despite all odds, to this wild and gorgeous time yet again. We throw our heads back, levitating.

All at once, we are flower girls.