You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'spring' tag.
Warm rain Wednesday put me into a more apt mood for the month, a mood of bliss, a reconsideration of the landscape and the season. Who could not be enthusiastic about March’s longer days, the kiss of sun, however short-lived?
This mood juxtaposes that of my previous post, I realize. What a grump! I was gently reminded of the idea that spring could be a good thing just shortly after I posted that last installment, called simply “march”. Well, that hardly sums it up.
The reminder of what the season symbolizes brought me to past years, when winter was so long. By winter, I mean deprivation and suffering, cold isolation and pain. I realize that the season can have its beauty, and indeed, the cold period of my life did have its brightness, too.
In Vermont, spring is a long and tortuous process, as the world buried beneath snow reappears, rusted, aged, rotted, or at least a bit worn down. Sap runs, and steam rises from the maple houses for some time as the days get longer. Ice still coats the surface, until at last the ground softens, oozing, cracking and heaving. Ferns pop up magically, and the hills change from white and gray to pink, then green.
I had left Vermont by the time I found a spring in my life. I looked around at what stuck out as the sun shone upon it, and found myself emboldened to tell a secret that I thought incredible. When the person I told believed me, I ran home and wrote it down. Like finding a precious clue buried beneath layers of dirt, I scrubbed the surface of that life, there all along, and found that the secret was much bigger than I realized. I wrote for many days, and then went back and showed my words to that person again. My words, written, held the truth of my world as I discovered it–there always, only invisible. My words, ultimately, transformed that world. But not by themselves. No, this renewal came only half from its creation; it had to have a reader, a helper, to make it real.
Spring comes here melting and blooming, and brings a summer that we do not yet know. What will grow in this climate? What was planted there? And what will we do in this landscape? The sun will shine, soon, and in the heat of the day, we will watch the world grow, trim it, edit and transform it as if it had never been dead to us. This is as it should be. We will change our growing world, and take it for granted, and love it, even as we create still another season in our life.
Why such a fascination with this month, of all months? March. March Hare. Ides of March. It is really not a pleasant month, after all. St. Patrick’s Day. Easter, perhaps. Passover, maybe. Spring.
March is all full of hope and symbols of renewal and whatnot, and still manages to disappoint, to frustrate, to dump inches, feet of wet snow, useless snow melting, radiating penetrating cold, with wind to add to it. What good does it bring us?
Spring promises so much. We embrace that fluke warm breeze, the shadow in the late afternoon. We want more. We want to shed our coats, walk, ride bikes, open the porch door. I want to. I want to be warm again. We have to wait. March makes us long for spring, as if it will never come.
And does it, really? Does spring really exist? Is the gradual warming in our imagination? Is spring anything more than occasional summer-like conditions thrown into the mix of winter itself, offering nothing more than a tease? A stick, a stone. Mud. Águas de Março.
Every time spring comes around, I think of Jobim’s famous song. “It’s the promise of spring. It’s the love in your heart.” And I had an image in these “Waters of March” of things budding in the woods, birds reappearing, snow melting. In that multitude of images (“It’s stick, it’s stone, it’s the end of the road. It’s ..), I always imagined winter ending. At least, I did, before I read the lyrics in Portuguese.
“São as águas de março
fechando o verão
É a promessa de vida
no teu coração.“
No, March is not always the spring it seems. Turn the world upside from where I sit, and March is September.
“They’re the waters of March
closing the summer.
It’s the promise of life
In your heart.”
Here in the northern hemisphere, I find myself mostly in a bad mood throughout March. All that “in like a lion” stuff wears thin as I keep looking for the lamb in the deal. I grump by, just wanting to be done with the month. Now, this is Massachusetts, though. March can be challenging in Missouri, where I grew up, as well. In Vermont, syrup runs, but I never let myself consider spring that early. But fall? It hardly entered my mind.
I remember once getting a letter, in June. It was cool there, grey. Not cold, but on that South American coast, winters were melancholy, but not so bad. Winter, in June… I knew, but never really thought it through, all those holidays that we think of for winter, flipped into summer holidays. Winter, quiet, with relatively few of them… perhaps as winter was meant to be.
And March, a rainy time, ending summer, Carnaval at the end of summer–not winter. And in all that, something seems just right.
“Heavenly shades of night are falling,” indeed.
I am shivering, holding onto a cup of hot tea on my back step, spoiled after the summer like conditions that woke up the trees this week.
It is quiet here, a different house without movement or voices, but nice for one evening.
Just before I took this picture, the neighborhood was cast in dramatic shadows, as the sun peeked out from behind clouds that have now disappeared. The sun has gone now, too, and this light is all that remains of the day. The leaves of the Japanese maple opened just a little today, promising more.
More. More spring, more warmth, more quiet, more voices, more love, more “rendezvous beneath the blue,” more you, whoever you are, wherever you are, more.
Spring. Yes, it is here, really here, in full bloom, literally, making me wonder if. If ever.
It is supposed to be just talking, just talking, and then, it is not. We are no longer talking, the room is warm, warmer than before, too warm—and yet, just right—and I know he is going to, think he is going to, want him to, am not sure (can anyone ever be really sure?) that I would want this to stop.
And yes, it would be wondrid and splenderful, and would it be too much like a teenager to say I would never wash again? Yes, of course it would, but it never hurts to think it.
It must be spring.
