Today, of melted snow and moist earth, smells like the springs of my childhood. If I were still young, I would play basketball in the slush at the end of my driveway, my hands red with shriveled ice and indented with loose gravel. Instead, I eat sushi and talk of having children before walking through Rittenhouse beneath the frail February sun. When shadows have overrun the park, we kiss goodbye.

This smell, liquefying winter and damp city brick, I cannot describe. How do we ever find the proper words for something so amorphous? This smell reminds me of Samantha. Perhaps it is better said, then, that for the rest of my life, this smell is Samantha. Yes, this day is Samantha, flushed in rosy dusk light and waiting over braised lamb in a fine little tiled courtyard, igniting some preternatural knowledge of spring deep in my human ancestry.