Daring to hope in spring

  • spring_maple-branches_sm.jpg

    Well, well. It is March, after all.

    You wouldn’t have known it a week ago. The last snow made every­thing look rather bleak and Antarc­tic (if I can make up an adjec­tive). But when you least expected it, the tem­per­a­tures crept upwards. As I let Clemen­tine into the back yard, I began to notice spots of brown appear­ing in the mot­tled white land­scape, look­ing like a com­pletely wrong map of the world. And the islands grew into con­ti­nents, which started to join together. Then yes­ter­day, the tem­per­a­ture reached to the low 60′s, and my back yard is just one big unin­ter­rupted land mass again.

    spring_sunspot-hog.jpgClemen­tine feels it, I can tell. The com­plete lethargy of the snow­bound days is melt­ing away as fast as the ice in the dri­ve­way. Instead of mak­ing a lit­tle ball in my office chair and blink­ing at me blearily, she is hav­ing trou­ble get­ting set­tled. The hard, diamond-like win­ter light in the office is replaced with some­thing that is a lit­tle softer, but gives off more warmth. The sun-spots on the car­peted floor sing their siren song, and Clemen­tine can NOT resist try­ing to fit into them, even when she has to twist around to make her­self con­form to the shape. And then, because they’re actu­ally rather hot, she’ll start to sigh and grunt and even­tu­ally take her­self to a nearby un-sun-spotted zone, only to return again when her body tem­per­a­ture has come down and she loses once again to temptation.

    And the silence of win­ter has started to give way as well. Two weeks ago, I was sur­prised to hear a lone car­di­nal utter­ing its repet­i­tive, liq­uid song. But not long after, a soli­tary star­ling took the stage for a while, and then yes­ter­day, a robin. Fur­ther up the food chain, the kids talk more ani­mat­edly on their way to school. More cars are on the road, some of them with radios going exu­ber­antly. And today, like the shot­gun start of the Mid­west­ern Grand Prix, I heard some­one start up their lawn mower for a cou­ple min­utes. Just wish­ful think­ing, at this point, but still.

    So March seems to be show­ing up, and we’re no longer quite as insane to hope for spring.

    How amaz­ing it is that this is the time of Lent. I shouldn’t be sur­prised any more by the mir­a­cle of how things worked out, of how Passover pre­fig­ured Pascha and how they both align with the chang­ing sea­sons in a way that could’ve just been a happy acci­dent but prob­a­bly wasn’t.

    spring_maple-branches1.jpgI shouldn’t be sur­prised, but I always am any­way — as sur­prised as I am to see the sil­hou­ette of new growth appear­ing on the bare branches of the maple tree. These are good sur­prises, the kind you like.

    It was a lovely win­ter, but it’s also lovely to see it make way for a new friend.


    Related posts:

    1. Late win­ter, early spring
    2. Spring?
    3. Sloppy spring
    4. And win­ter makes that sloooow right turn
    5. Late Sep­tem­ber

    March 8th, 2010 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • Mimi 03.08.2010

    I think that is part of the joy of a hard win­ter, is the break­ing of the ice (lit­er­ally) as we get closer and closer to Pascha.

  • Anam Cara

    Here in North­ern Vir­ginia, the glac­i­ers are also reced­ing and our front yard has become a sea of pur­ple cro­cus. With over 2 feet of snow in 2 weeks, we had thought that we’d still have moun­tains of snow at Pascha left by the plows so recently. Now there are annoy­ing mounds that keep one from cut­ting through a park­ing lot (or trick­ing one into believ­ing there is a space when in fact it is still snow filled), but we are won­der­ing if it will last the week.

    We’ve been turn­ing off the fur­nace and open­ing all our win­dows dur­ing the day to air out the house the last few days. Chil­dren are doing what chil­dren are meant to do: run­ning ’til they drop, eat­ing every­thing that doesn’t eat them first, and then sleep­ing soundly ’til it all starts again.

    What is there not to love about spring?

  • Word­mama

    Here in north­ern Nevada, it’s done the same thing it does every year — fake us out with a cou­ple of warm weeks, then whammo! It snowed last night, and it was 22 degrees when I left the house this morn­ing. Feh!

  • Grace

    Per­son­ally, I might like if I could tog­gle win­ter on and off a cou­ple quick times before it’s per­ma­nently spring. For one thing, it’s sooo nice to stay comfy in the bad weather. For another thing, the back yard is just scream­ing for big gar­den­ing atten­tion. Phooey!

  • s-p

    We planted toma­toes a cou­ple weeks ago and I just put grass seed in for Moo. If we haven’t been faked out, every­one will be eat­ing good in a few weeks.

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