Smell the Flowers

This morning I was walking down the block toward one of the schools I get to work at. A young mother was pushing her daughter along in a stroller, and just as they went by, the girl, a little one, asked, “Mommy, what’s that smell?”

I inhaled as the mother answered in a lively way that her nose was stuffed up, but that many plants were blooming and making the smells.

As I inhaled again, I smelled lilacs that I would not have noticed.