Been offline smelling roses.

On the slow narrowing that happens to adults and the bright-eyed toddler who interrupted mine.

I was walking through SF, specifically the Pac Heights neighborhood, with my three-year-old the other day. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this part of town, it’s one of those pristine San Francisco streets where the sidewalks are perfect, hedges are trimmed, and the houses cost more than a small country’s GDP. I had my sunnies on, iced matcha in hand, and my mind three steps ahead on where we were heading next.

But then he stopped us.

My three-year-old spotted a fluffy pink flower growing along the edge of what I can only assume is a twelve-million-dollar property, ran straight over to it, plucked it without a single hesitation, and held it up to his face.

“Mama! This smells like raspberries!!”

He handed it to me the way kids hand you things… with complete confidence that you will find it just as magical as they do.

So I smelled it.

And he was right. Not just a little right. Exactly right. It smelled like a bucket of fresh raspberries. Bright and sweet like you could eat it. I pulled back and looked at this little pink flower like it had just spoken to me. Because in a way it had.

I can’t remember the last time I smelled a flower.

Not casually walked past one. Not noticed one with my eyes. Actually stopped…. leaned in… and smelled one.

A decade, maybe? More? I genuinely don’t know.

For the rest of our walk, even during the stretches when he dozed off in the stroller, I kept stopping. Every time something caught my eye, I’d pull over to the side of the sidewalk and lean in. Even when it felt awkward to do it. A deep burgundy one that smelled like honey. A white one so light and clean it barely smelled like anything at all.

Each one different… like it has its own specific little world.

And I felt … I don’t know how else to say this… happy and sad at the same time. Happy because something small and beautiful was happening to me on a random day. And sad because it had been so long. So many walks past so many flowers and I never once thought to lean in.

It took a bright-eyed three-year-old to remind me that this was something I was allowed to do.

So where else am I seeing in black and white when I should be seeing in color?

Because I don’t think the flowers are the point exactly. The flowers are just the most literal version of something that’s been quietly happening to us adults for years.

A slow narrowing. Life gets busy. And full and serious. And without meaning to, we start moving through it on a kind of autopilot. Efficient, forward-facing, results-oriented. We stop noticing what isn’t urgent. We stop touching things that don’t require our attention. We forget that some things don’t need a purpose to be worth pausing for.

Kids haven’t learned that yet. They haven’t been taught that a flower is just background scenery, that pausing for it is an inconvenience, that the goal is to get where you’re going. A three-year-old sees a pink rose and thinks: that might be interesting. And then they go find out.

When did I stop doing that? When did you?

I don’t have a tidy lesson here because I’m still unpacking it myself. And I’m not going to tell anyone to slow down, because we already know we should and it doesn’t help to be told.

But I will say this: I’ve been thinking about all the places in my life where I’m moving so fast I’ve forgotten to be curious. The conversations I’m half in. The meals I don’t really taste. The people I love who I look at without really seeing.

My son is three. He has no idea he taught me anything. He’s already moved on to his baseball collection and wrestling with his little brother and whatever comes next.

But somewhere in Pacific Heights, there’s a fluffy raspberry-scented flower that woke something up for me. And to that I am grateful.

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Tables Ready is written to be an open conversation with my readers so I can get to know you like you’re getting to know me. If this sparked something, I’d love to hear about it in the comments —

Cheers!
Meg