“If winter comes, can spring be far behind?” — Percy Byshe Shelley
Oh dear . . . here we are at Easter, and it seems as if we celebrated Christmas only yesterday! My life has followed an orbit as fixed as any planet’s. Each season has had its own delectable essence: the brandy-hot passion of summer, the honey mead of autumn and the aromatic wine of remembrance during the wintertime of my existence. And now here I am, back again, sipping the effervescent champagne of the springtime of my being — if not bodily, at least mentally.
Certain dates highlight the seasons of my life: July 4, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Easter symbolizes spring and all things newly minted. The Easters of my youth remain ever fresh and bright in my memory: white-gloved girls shivering in fluffy white coats and spring dresses as Easter was often cold; black patent shoes that I envied since I could wear only Buster Brown Girl Scout shoes because of my long, narrow feet; candy and eggs colored with Peter Paas dye; and church followed by Mother’s Easter feast of ham, mashed potatoes, chicken and noodles, assorted vegetables and relishes, deviled eggs, homemade rolls and three kinds of pie with all our family gathered round.
No one expressed springtime better than King Solomon. His “Song of Solomon” is in the Old Testament whose King James version I prefer to the rather sterile language of modern ones:
“For, lo, the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone;
The flowers appear
upon the Earth;
The time of the singing
of birds is come . . .”
Isn’t that lovely? Fine poets such as King David, Solomon, Shelley and Shakespeare capture moods and emotions with an economy of a few well-chosen words.
Today is a glorious, blue-sky day. Twenty-nine white crocuses are blooming outside the greenhouse window, and daffodils nod in the gentle breeze. The pussy willow has catkins, and the magnolia is in bud.
Birds visit the feeder; sparrows twitter in the bush next to the window; and robins hop across the lawn. The cardinal is perched in the oak tree and whistling its ode to spring: “Wheat . . . wheat . . . wheat! Cheer, cheer, cheer, cheer, cheer!” Ms. Kitty crouches in the window, golden eyes huge, tail twitching while she pursues her daily ornithological studies.
Squirrelie interrupts foraging for seeds beneath the feeder when he sees one of us and zips to the front door for peanuts. Sometimes he sits close to the window to torment the cat as if singing that age-old chant of human kids, “N’ya, n’ya, n’ya, n’ya-n’ya! You ca-a-a-n’t get me!”
To me, my mother was the personification of spring. One year we went fishing at a place called Pete’s Pond near Arlington or some other village between Knightstown and Rushville. She found a bloodroot in the woods and transplanted it in her wildflower bed.
After marrying my stepfather, she took it to New Castle. Many years later she gave the bloodroot to Bill for him to plant under the persimmon tree in our backyard on Ritter. I cried at closing because I couldn’t find it to bring to our current home. Several springs passed when I’d be filled with regret until the new owner gave me a start of it.
The bloodroot is blooming early this year. It gives me an ineffable pleasure, comfort and sense of completion to see the continuation of something that my dear mother started 65 years ago. Marcel Proust described how his aunt, the village of Combray and its people rose up before him out of a teaspoon of tea. Every spring Mother rises up before me out of the bloodroot’s blossoms, looking and sounding just as she did when we dug up the original plant, and I become more deeply aware of the circularity of life and how it turns back upon itself. wclarke@comcast.net