Every spring, just before Easter, my grandmother would say, “It’s time. The willow is ready.” We never questioned what “ready” meant. Somehow, she just knew.

We didn’t pick the biggest branches. She always looked for one that bent with the breeze — never snapped. “That’s the one that understands life,” she’d say. And I believed her.

We’d bring it home, place it near the family icon, and gently tap each other on the shoulder. Not out of superstition, but something deeper — a quiet blessing for growth, for strength, for the kind of peace only spring can offer.

I still do it now, even far from home. I don’t have a church nearby. I don’t have her. But I have the memory. I have the ritual. And I have the willow — soft, silent, still sacred.