As with most people, many of my mornings adhere to the autopilot of perpetual adulthood; wake up, secretive scroll, joints cracking, crawl to caffeine.

But on this particular morning as the last week of April loomed over me, I reached for my coffee-filled mug and turned to look out the ajar door to my deck. I saw the mid-spring morning sun yawning through the trees and realized that at long last, there was green ornamenting the branches.

As every other Instagram reel instructs me to do, I relaxed my shoulders. How easy it could be to focus on the mosquito bites I would soon furiously scratch or the bodily disconnect I would feel when I reluctantly pulled on summer’s inaugural pair of shorts. I rolled those aforementioned shoulders and approached the warm spot forming inside the screen door.

Through the breath-hitching cold of winter and mind-boggling March snowstorms, the blooming side of springtime was now gorgeous and green all the same. And is there anything like the gut punch of the passage of time when you realize you’re on the precipice of summer? The deflated feeling of dew drops on green grass serving as sporadic reminders that there is no stopping the frantic feeling of a fleeting season?

As I walked towards the door sipping my coffee, I thought of other recent moments that reminded me of just how trepidatious time can become. Encounters that felt blurred by the background noise of never growing up or fogged by that youthful feeling of being so certain the future will figure itself out.

AND IS THERE ANYTHING LIKE THE GUT PUNCH OF THE PASSAGE OF TIME WHEN YOU REALIZE YOU'RE ON THE PRECIPICE OF SUMMER?

I think of my recent encounter at Ulta. As I had a mild yet quite productive identity crisis surrounding an impending purchase of some fake nails, a youthful voice next to me told the cashier that her date of birth was September 24, 2012. How incredible that we are both Libras and how humbling that not only does that make her a teenager, it makes me the exact opposite of one.

Or how about perhaps whilst on a frantic weekend trip to Fleet Farm to replace my adamantly vocal fire alarm, I saw a young man and his father bonding over the fit of a fresh pair of new jeans. The dad coaxed his kid into acknowledging the fit as the son reaffirmed through clenched teeth that “they were fine.”

As I whizzed by to secure what would certainly be the wrong model smoke detector, I thought about how long it had been since I had needed parental approval for my pants. I thought about how as a grown up, the thought of trying on a pair of pants on a Sunday afternoon sounds like a specific level of hell. But maybe it doesn’t get the glamour it used to when there’s no one on the other side of the dressing room.

It seems I can now point to many moments in my life where blooming branches came and went too quickly for me to bear witness to the beauty in slow, meaningful moments. I had gotten so lost in the givens of my day-to-day that I forgot leaves fade and fall so much faster when you are suddenly slingshotted into adulthood.

How can I ever replicate the carelessness of a summer Tuesday at seventeen? How can I suspend myself in a moment so my parents and my pets don’t get any older? How can I beg those buds on the trees to just be buds for a bit longer?

Maybe it’s the longer days or the blossoming trees. Or maybe it’s the existential dread clawing at my crow’s feet. But I’m good to keep that door open if it means the girl in me stays a little greener.