Daddy, this is Daniel.

Have you ever smelled the Earth? I’m sure you have. Smell the summer and the Earth after an evening rain. Crisp and cool. What about autumn when apples have fallen and are sweetly rotting into the ground, spreading their seeds for the next batch of trees? Let it turn colder and smell the morning after the snow has coated the trees. Cold. Clean. The way the fire smells when you throw an orange peel into its already orange flames. Now smell the Earth as spring comes. The Earth coming alive again…soil bringing life back to all it’s cared for when the snow covered it all; the seeds sprouting, the trees pushing out their leaves…every scent is new—despite the fact that you’ve smelled it every spring since you’ve been born.

Daniel, did you know you smell like spring? I wonder how long this scent will remind me of you.

Daddy, did you know that when the quaking aspen leaves shudder and applaud in the breeze they always whisper your love to me.

I wish you could meet, I think you two would have been friends. Some day you’ll meet and maybe you’ll understand the Earth a little better after getting to know the other. I know I do.