In the springtime, the center bay window at the back of my house, the one in the breakfast nook that we’ve turned into a sitting nook, turns purple.

Other times of the year when I look through this window, I see the green of grass and leaves on the tree that was on a sapling when we moved here. Or the welcomed white of snow covering bare branches and all the ground. Or the warm yellow of brilliant summer sun. It is a pleasant view, no matter the time of year. When my husband Sam and I sit in the nook, in the mismatched accent chairs drinking our coffee or wine, reading or talking, we look out these windows.

Our view used to be our boys running and playing in the back, little ones running around, chasing each other with light sabers or chasing soccer balls. Now they have outgrown the backyard. But the pond that rests at the edge of the backyard is still there. And the birds. And the lilac shrub.

This year I worried that the purple lilac blooms would not come. The weather turned warm too early. Then we had freeze warnings.

I sat on our back deck after a day of teaching in my house, my students and colleagues far from me. I needed to be somewhere not-in-my-house. I sat on the wicker love seat, wrapped in my pink fleece blanket and sipped my coffee in the late afternoon. I tried reading something on my phone—maybe some article about how to teach online or something about how to deal with social isolation. But it was too heavy to hold. I tried reading a book, but I couldn’t enjoy it. I tried playing a word game, but it felt like a waste of time. I could not focus.

So I just sat. My deck is covered by a white pergola and surrounded by boxwood shrubs. On the corner is the lilac shrub that reaches at least a dozen feet into the air. Sam says it blocks the view. I say it is the view. And it makes me feel cozy when I’m sitting on the deck reading or writing. It shields me.  

I studied it that afternoon when I couldn’t do anything else. And I put my worries on it. What if it didn’t bloom this year? Because of the early warm weather and now the freeze warnings? What if there was no purple? There were hints of blooms, but they were small and dark—not the full, soft lavender shades, not the cascades of color, not the fragrant sweetness. Not right. Not yet.

I worried.

If there were no blooms, my window view wouldn’t turn purple. Things wouldn’t be as they should be—beautiful and right.

I muttered about it for days. “I love my lilac shrub. I hope it blooms.”

“I’m sure it will,” Sam said, sipping his coffee. We were in the sitting nook, watching a tiny bird bounce from one branch to another on our tree. A red cardinal perched on the railing of our deck. I imagined he was waiting for the lilacs to turn, too. I smiled at my silliness.

“I know you don’t much care for it,” I said.

“I hate mowing around it,” he smiled. I smiled. Years ago, more than a decade ago, Sam accidentally mowed over three brand new baby shrubs I had planted along the side of the house only days before. He had mistaken them for overgrown weeds that he had somehow missed before. I wondered now if it was premeditated. And I was glad my lilac shrub was far too large to be mistaken for a weed. 

“I just hope it blooms this year.” I couldn’t explain it more than that. I just needed the purple in my window view.

I needed it the same way I needed to play games with my children, to try new recipes, to write, to talk to my mom, to make plans, to play my violin, to smile, to laugh.

I needed it the same way I needed the heart palpitations to stop. They had become so frequent that I couldn’t keep count how often they occurred. Panic attacks that came with clinical OCD. Mental disorders are aggravated by uncertainty and social isolation.

Because I am a high school teacher, my job was affected quickly and completely by the quarantine. Because I am a mom of school-aged children, my family was affected drastically. Because I am just like everyone else, I felt it.

And I needed my purple blooms.

Four years ago, almost exactly to the day, the day after Prince died, Sam bought a purple polo shirt to wear to work. That evening, we watched Prince on television for hours and wept bitterly. Sam told the boys about the Prince half-time show when it rained. “He asked the producers to make it rain harder. And then he played Purple Rain on his purple guitar in the pouring rain,” Sam told the boys, with a mix of laughter and tears in his words. At the beginning of that show, Prince had said, “We’re just trying to get through this thing called life.”

Purple Rain, Prince said in an interview once, is blood in the sky—red and blue. The song is about loving someone in the middle of pain and destruction. Prince said of his own song that it is about faith and God and getting through.

Several days ago, I followed what has become my new routine. I woke up before everyone else. I stood in my quiet kitchen and scooped the coffee grounds, poured the water into the coffee maker and thought about all the things I needed to get done and all the things I could not do. It would be another day of paperwork. Another day of not seeing my students, of not knowing when this would end, of feeling stuck. Would this ever get better? Would this ever get easier?

I breathed in big and reached into the cabinet for a coffee mug. When I happened to glance up, out into my backyard, as I waited for my coffee to finish brewing, I saw that the entire view from my center bay window had turned a perfect shade of purple.