We went to the farm yesterday.

Briggs jumped in the hay.  Ken made butter.  I decoupaged a very fresh egg.

We were there with “my side” of the family to celebrate Easter a day early.  Everything about the day was lovely.  The animals, the activities, the company, the sprawling lunch buffet, the view of Mt. Monadnock…the way the milk that came from the cow in the barn directly across from the dining room turned my decaf coffee into the most luscious cup of comfort.

And as I pleasantly sank into my fourth cup of the day, my gaze floated over to meet Henry David Thoreau.  His words lovingly held in a dated, but clean and fitting frame:

Still grows the vivacious lilac, a generation after the door and the lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented-flowers each spring…

And just as everything about the day had been lovely, everything about this phrase made me feel better.

There was a time when the door, and the lintel, and the sill were important.  There was a time when the home demanded focus, attention, and sacrifice.  There was a time when keeping the home together felt exactly like keeping the earth in orbit.  There was a time when the home was loved and it loved back – and then, there was a time when it wasn’t, and it didn’t.

But good times and hard times remained no match for Springtime, for each Spring the vivacious lilacs still bloomed.

Which, I took as Thoreau’s way of reminding me to relax.  Because while hard work is honest and rewarding and healthy, the pursuit of perfection is wasteful.

Because regardless, the lilacs will still bloom.  And they smell heavenly.