(Excerpts from my novel, The Notebooks of Honora Gorman: Fairytales, Whimsy, and Wonder)
“Is April a time or a place? Honora wondered. Right now, as she looked out her window, the rain gurgling in the gutters, the trees full of white blossoms and tiny bright leaves against a pearl gray sky, it seemed a place – a land of beginnings, of youth, of beauty, a place to breathe deeply and stroll through, to enjoy its flowers and first greens, the cool soft air. She grabbed an umbrella and decided to wander through Central Park, down the Poet’s Walk to the lake, and absorb the April beauty.”
“Blossom time. The spring was cold, with occasional snow. Then a few warm days came and the pear trees along the street burst into bloom. Honora waited all year for this month with the fluttering white blossoms, lovely against the old brick, the gray slate roofs, the softer gray of the sky. The temperature had dropped again and she hoped the cold would keep the blossoms on the trees a little longer. But already she saw a bit of green – the leaves were beginning to show. Soon, the rains would loosen the blossoms, whisking them into the air. And she would have to wait another year for April blossoms.”
“Honora walked the streets of her pretty neighborhood almost every day. In the spring it was bursting with color – shooting rays of yellow forsythias, azalea bushes so thick with purple or red or coral blooms that they scarcely showed any leaves. There weren’t many lilac bushes but Honora knew where they were and would linger next to them, or stand under the ones arching over a tall fence, to breath in their fragrance.”
“There had been a magnificent old wisteria plant with massive, thick ropes of vines climbing an old sycamore, draping sweetness and pale-purple beauty overhead every spring. It had been pure magic and every April Honora looked forward to seeing it, raising her face to bathe in its perfume, filling herself with its beauty.”
The Notebooks of Honora Gorman: Fairytales, Whimsy, and Wonder
“Not a love story – and yet a story of love. Love for a city, for the artist’s way, and dreams.”
(Images from my Pinterest boards.)
Linda Mahkovec - Author 