There are a few pink cotton-candy kisses of buds on the nectarine tree – promises of a Spring to come. Each year when they appear, my thoughts return to a late winter’s night in 2004. I remember arriving home, stepping from the car and being astonished that the tree had blossomed. A quarter-moon bright above me, I perched on the brick wall, shivered from the crisp air, and inhaled the delicate scent. Before that moment, I was oblivious to this beauty bursting forth around me; focused instead on my father slowly relinquishing life a few miles away. I was dizzy from the incongruity. His passing came a few days later, just past his 88th birthday. I cannot see the blooms without remembering that night and thinking of him.