*March, Pink-green baby leaves on the Neem tree, and Patience. (1-03-2025)* March starts, and I have this surreal feeling of newness because back in childhood, March was the month when schools reopened after 2.5 months of winter holidays in Quetta. Visions of freshly started classes and a sense of unsurety that you could feel at the start of the academic year appear before my eyes. I remember my parents wrapping our notebooks the night before the new school year into brown paper and then putting on plastic covers. The scent of new notebooks, plastic covers, and pages has stayed with me to date. While March has arrived with nostalgia, this time, I am also relishing the glimmers of the present moment. This morning, I so appreciated the light beams falling in from my bedroom window and making patterns using shadows and wind. As trees rustle outside my bedroom window, the patterns change on the floor. I was silently grateful for the healing power of a balmy day and the trees that came as a gift with this new house. A lazy way to soak the sun for me is to sit near the bedroom window on a wooden stool and read. As I slowly read through the pages of Lahore Awargi (with a lot of interruptions from my preschooler), I all of a sudden noticed the pink-green baby leaves growing in bunches on my beloved Neem tree that one can easily mistake for blossoms. I looked at them with delight and how these little leaves are choosing to just grow on the top to soak the maximum amount of sun and the sky. This afternoon, I had some quiet time on my hands, and I started journalling. While writing I had this sudden inkling that some things are just there to teach us patience. We can not change much about them. We may have tried and failed many times to make them our way, but no, they don't change, and the lesson in there is to be patient. With the lesson of patience and the hope that my after-lunch chai would arrive soon, I put away my phone and wonder how to make the best of this rare, quiet time.