A Pilgrimage Beneath Pink Trees

Evanescent as a sunrise and whimsical as a fairy tale, they don’t simply bloom—they arrive. Each spring, I feel a delicious luck that we are here, sakura and I, on Harrogate’s Stray. English mist clings to their delicate petals, seeping through my shoes in the morning’s hush. The cherry trees stretch upward, radiant with the confidence of an adored celebrity. By afternoon, crowds flock from nearby towns, cameras at the ready, blankets strewn across drying grass for picnics, games, or quiet reading. To stand beneath their branches is something like brushing against a spell or a shooting star. They are magic. 

And then they are gone.

In Japan, they are sakura, and people gather for hanami—flower viewing. More than trees, they are a philosophy, a celebration of the ephemeral, a reminder to cherish what blooms in its season. And much like an aurora or a lantern-lit deep-sea fish, sakura lift the ordinary’s veil, revealing what might be possible. Yet, even as I see them, their impossibility dazzles.

Beneath these pink canopies, I hold my own quiet hanami, and it becomes an inward pilgrimage. At 48, an expat Floridian in my seventh English year, I stand at a crossroads. My children, once my compass, now chase their own enchanted dreams—two at university, one lingering in the nest, his high school years waning. 

The house grows more still, but loud with questions:

What am I? 

Who am I? 

What do I love? 

What should I do?

These questions run roughshod through me now. Some days, a melancholy; others, a panic. For twenty years, I answered them like a pull-string toy: 

I am a mother. 

I’m mom.

I love my family. 

I care for them.

My purpose, neatly ordered, filled my days. But now, as the demands soften, those questions poke me in my chest, confrontational under these cherry blossoms.

I’ve never been to Japan, knowing it only through books, but its principles stir me: wabi-sabi’s embrace of imperfection, shibumi’s refined simplicity, and these days ikigai. In this season of emptier rooms and smaller suppers for fewer people, I am seeking my own ikigai—that sacred intersection of what I love, what I can do, what the world needs, and what sustains me. Months of reflection, weeks of honing with authenticity’s careful edge, and things shapeless ideas are coming into focus. As Shakespeare wrote, “The meaning of life is to find your gift. The purpose of life is to give it away.” My ikigai is both my gift and my offering.

It’s the novels I’ve loved over decades of reading and those I yearn to write for myself. It’s the places I’ve roamed, the stories I’ve carried back in rucksacks, and those yet to unfold. It’s the photos I’ve taken, and will take, the meals I’ve made and the few for which I’m small-town famous, the art I’ll create, the conversations I crave, the lessons I’ve learned, and all I still long to know. At 48, my pockets are both half full, half empty—heavy with what I’ve gathered, eager for what else I can stuff into them. 

Packing up my children and watching them go is a lonely journey, but seeing them seek their ikigai is a lovely one. The light of their search, often spills across my own cheeks, because this bend in the road is ours together. A friend recently spoke of her cousin, in her thirties, reviving an old dream. “Sometimes we set our dreams down,” she said, “and then we pick them up again.”

So here I am, polishing old dreams, stuffing them in my pockets like a little girl hoarding gumballs. Dreams born as a Florida girl with a suntan and a Disney Pass, still pulse within me, on this North Sea island where the sun casts new, surprising light.

Sakura reminds me: chase it. While hunger burns in your soul, while passion bucks and grit clenches your jaw. Run for it, with a heart like a war drum in your ribs. Hanami. Find the flowers. Seek them out at all costs, before the fire in your mind outpaces the strength in your limbs, before you believe the lie of “someday.”

Do it while magic arches overhead.

In the quickest breath, the will petals drift, pooling in pink tides at our feet. Do everything you can to see them before the fall.