What if I'm a mermaid?

It's early, but I have fully succumbed to the desire for winter's end. The air is warm, rain is falling. Snow is slowly dripping away. There is so much poetry in spring, and for me it's always been a time of both hope and nostalgia.

I haven't had the heart to remove the Christmas wreath from the door of my house. I've never before lived in a place where having a wreath is so necessary. But something about that wreath invited me into this house that otherwise doesn't feel like my own.

So I went to JoAnn's last weekend, with a fist full of coupons and a sheer determination to scavenge for cheap supplies to make a spring wreath. I walked through the aisles with my husband and daughter. We laughed, joked, tried to scare each other from aisle to aisle, and came home with wreath supplies.

I put the above wreath together tonight, after eating a dinner of pot stickers and sweet potato fries. My husband and daughter were sitting on our new[ish] couch playing Disney's Tangled on the Wii. I giggled as the lyrics to Tori Amos' Silent All These Years popped into my head.

Excuse me, but can I be you for awhile?

My dog won't bite if you sit real still ...

What would my 16-year-old Tori Amos obsessed, boy crazy, justice seeking, all-knowing self say if she could see me sitting at a kitchen table with a hot glue gun and fake flowers? My husband and daughter playing a Disney video game.

So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts.

What's so amazing about really deep thoughts?

If I didn't believe I had everything figured out, I certainly believed I would have everything figured out soon. I don't laugh at the ignorance of my childhood; I am glad of who I was and who I've become, regardless of all the mistakes I've made along the way. I do laugh at who I was and what I thought my life would be. I never could have predicted it would go this way. I certainly never saw myself in the suburbs with a table full of fake flowers. But as I sat there, humming the angst of Tori Amos with a glue gun in hand, I realize I never could have predicted the depth of love and joy and hope that I have in my life.

As a teenager, I loved lyrics and poetry - and I'm glad to say that despite the mundane, I still do.

Let's hear what you think of me now,

but baby don't look up.

The sky is falling.