Author Archives: Alan Ilagan

Tightly coiled, and barely discernible in these photos, are the buds of our Kwanzan cherry tree, just waiting to burst forth in lush pink. Andy had an impressive specimen at his old house, and that’s where I first viewed the beauty of this variety up close. It had a thick trunk of handsome bark, and later developed leaves that would range from burgundy to green as the season progressed, before finally flaring up in brilliant shades of gold and yellow.

This one is just about the size of that one now, and soon, if it stops snowing, it will unfurl its magnificent blossoms and dangle them like little ballerinas over the water of the pool. For now, all is hope and anticipation and eagerness – a most happy state to inhabit. 

Sitting in the waiting area after receiving my second COVID-19 vaccine, I listened to the rain pour down heavily on the canopy above us. Despite the dimness of the day, and the gray haziness from all the rain, there was a tiny spark of hope and excitement coupled with a burgeoning sense of relief and a bit of light on the horizon. This has been such a long time coming, and while it doesn’t fix the world, it will improve my own little space in it. I’ll finally get to hug my parents and go safely inside their house. We’ll get to have dinner with my vaccinated friends, and have them over to talk and laugh and re-connect after over a year apart. We’ll be able to go back to our favorite restaurants, and travel to our favorite cities. We will do it carefully, and within the new rules of safety, taking sensible precautionary measures. The lessons of COVID have not been all bad. 

But for now, for this rainy stretch of days that outwardly feel gloomy and gray,when spring is recharging itself, my heart is leaping a little. 

My favorite color has arrived on the spring scene in this brilliant budding of a maple tree in our neighborhood. Though the allergies may be wreaking their typical April havoc, it doesn’t bother me much when it means warmer temperatures, sunnier days, and colorful peeps as seen here. 

Today is due to be rainy with a side of rain, so I’m inhabiting the beauty that was yesterday, and hoping for similar beauty at some point tomorrow. There are lawn bags yet to be filled, corners still to be raked, and bare branches about to burst forth in bloom and leaf. There is hope in the air as well, as there can’t help but be in this happy month of April. This afternoon I get my second COVID vaccination, so two weeks from now we will begin the process of painting this town, and Boston, all bright shades of chartreuse and fuchsia and Tiffany blue. 

People take the internet far too seriously these days. That seems especially true of the generation that has emerged not knowing any other world, and occasionally I engage in mourning for them, whether merited or not. I grew up before the internet was even a glimmer in Al Gore’s eye. I came of age in a time when our main form of long-distance communication was still the phone, but the landline version: cords and rotary dial and all. My niece and nephew widen their eyes when they hear what we lacked then, but I’ve only ever been immensely grateful for having grown up in a world without cel phones or social media. In so many ways, that absolutely saved me – not only then, but now. 

When so much of our lives are based off of and compared impossibly against that which we see on social media, the fragile identity of my youth would have broken under such intense attacks. My generation (Generation X, or Xennials according to some) had what some might consider the best of both worlds: the emerging technology of computers and the internet coupled with the knowledge and memory of a lifestyle without such intrusions. It’s becoming a lost generation, for better and worse, and I marvel at those who don’t know what it’s like to spend an entire Saturday without computer or phone or TikTok.

Growing up without such distractions allowed me to use and develop my imagination, and at the same time learn to appreciate and live in the quiet moments of downtime that seem to make so many people uncomfortable today. More than that, when the internet and its accompanying barrage of social media advanced, I was able to take it all with a grain of salt. It was, at first, a whimsical thing of novelty – a new form of communication – sterile and removed from the closer mechanism of phone calls or handwritten letters which had been my preferred mode of connection. As such, I never had to take it all that seriously. Since I wasn’t raised on it, I knew I could easily, and perhaps quite happily, survive without it. That’s made a world of difference when I see people getting so outrageously bent out of shape on FaceBook and Twitter and Instagram. 

Not that I don’t get dragged down in the muck now and then – and not that I don’t take some of what I do here very seriously indeed – but I’ve lasted for all these online years by keeping things more or less light and breezy – knowing full well that so much of this isn’t real, even if it’s forever.