My family’s Christmas tradition of making paella includes adding a few deep red strands of saf-
fron, which I delicately pinch before letting them fall into the pan. I know how expensive these

fine fibers are, and have always known how much flavor a mere gram could add, but I’d never
(knowingly) stopped to appreciate the beauty of its origin. It wasn’t until a paella-making class in
Barcelona where I learned where the world’s most expensive spice comes from.

Saffron is a product of the crocus sativus, which is in the iris family. I know nothing about most

irises, though. Crocuses, however, are the short, strong, perennials whose stems stay under-
ground as their flowers poke inches above the earth in which they may have been planted de-
cades ago, or, last year. Crocuses are the flowers that I don’t stop to smell, but stop me and make

me smile.

I don’t know exactly what climate the crocuses prefer, but they seem to love the unmanicured
lawn that lies in front of our house. They thrive under the looming presence of a large oak tree
whose roots have started cracking our driveway. But, it has been there longer than the driveway
and has lived through enough that I think it deserves to spread its roots however far it would
like.

I used to be somewhat annoyed when I would get out of the car and try to walk across the grass
in early spring, only to hear mildly panicked warnings of Don’t step on the crocuses or Could
you please just walk around. I never really understood it. Sure, they were good-looking, but there
were so many of them. They just seemed to pop up each year without any laborious planting,

weeding, or fertilizing involved. Why couldn’t I just walk across the lawn on my tippy toes, try-
ing to dodge each bud and flower as if it were an idyllic young child’s minefield? As far as I was

concerned, it was okay if a flower had to suffer the wrath of my dirtied soles every so often. But
now I understand—or at least I think I do.

When I was in sixth grade, I had my most mentally trying winter. I don’t remember too much
of it, other than that I wasn’t playing a sport and most afternoons after I got home, I would wind
up in a nervous breakdown, sitting on top of the chest freezer in our basement (for no particular
reason, other than I liked it there). These fits would typically end in me crying and my parents
saying I should either join a sports team or talk to a therapist. So, in the end, we compromised: a
treadmill for our basement. I don’t know if it was working out, me just generally maturing, or the
anxiety study I participated in at Yale, but I’ve managed to find a way to make peace with winter.
Ever since that sixth-grade season, though, I have better been able to understand the mental toll
of the coldest New England weeks.

I inherited my dislike for the depths of winter from my mother and she from her father. Weeks
before the winter solstice, I’ll notice a large sunlamp that my mom uses, lurking on the hutch in
our dining room. Needless to say, in my family, the winter has always been marked by the cold
and dark outside, only brightened by cinnamon rolls on Christmas and the occasional snow day.
I don’t hate winter, but it has always been defined by my mother wearing more layers—from
heated vests to my sweatshirts to just hoods—because she always thinks it’s too cold, comments
on how it was too early for it to be completely dark, and optimistic musings of warmer weather.

So after what always felt like a long winter (which I would call harsh if that term didn’t romanti-
cize the mentally draining season in my mind), I happily began to notice it getting lighter out-
side as I cut diagonally across my lawn after a long practice following school.

In late February or March, as I start getting back out on the baseball field for my first catches of
the season, I catch myself a step or two onto our front lawn, seeing a bright purple or yellow bud
poking above the grass. I stop myself and see the first crocuses of the year, admiring the hues of
the buds and the spontaneity and suddenness with which they have appeared across our front

yard. I know my feelings towards them aren’t mutual, but it’s as if they are saying Spring’s com-
ing. Not yet, the rest of the warmth is still on its way, but we’re here. Despite layers of footprints

in the snow, sleet, rain, and “wintry mix”—perhaps the plants’ version of generation anxiety—
the crocuses, too, always make it through the winter.

It shouldn’t be all that miraculous that the seasons are changing. I write the date on tests, essays,
or homework nearly every day. I know that time is passing. I knew that eventually the snow

would melt and days would lengthen. But somehow I can’t quite trust anything in the way that I
do those crocuses. All the other flowers will start to show signs of blooming in weeks, or months,

but the crocuses tide us over, a refundable deposit that we are sad to see go so soon, but ac-
knowledge that is part of the deal we signed by planting them.

When the crocuses start to bloom, it’s reassurance that we’ve almost made it through. It’s another
moment in the year that says hey look, you always say time passes so quickly—here’s a reminder
to slow down; it’s a little purple shoot of hope almost crushed in all my exhaustion from school
and practice. The crocus, just its presence alone, reminds me to slow down, breathe, smile, and
look where I am stepping.