I THINK IT'S HERE

I say, “I think it’s here,” because life in Minnesota has taught me that you can never be sure when spring has really arrived. But something happened the other day that brought me hope. Many of us have taken a long journey, to some far-off destination we yearn to go to, and have experienced that feeling of relief that comes when we finally get out of the car, or off the plane, and know we are at our journey’s end. It’s as if we have endured something on that trip that had to be done before the real fun begins. We “paid our dues,” you might say, and that’s where that part of my analogy ends.

Here is where the other half starts. Yesterday morning when I got out of bed, and went to the patio doors to check the weather, as I often do, there it was—the ice was gone! Our lake was back, and to top it off, swimming right in front of my house were our loons. All thoughts of that long journey, through last winter’s brutal encasement of snow and ice, were gone from my mind. The dark nights of winter staring at the television, and listening to the wind blow outside the house, were history. We have finally turned the corner.

There lives in many of us an older person, with an aversion from work. We’re retired now, and punching the old clock is a distant memory, but there is such a thing as a labor of love for others and me, and it comes in spring. Each flowerbed I uncover brings little surprises because there they are again, poking their little heads above the earth, searching for the sunlight that is their lifeblood. The dead leaves have been raked and blown away, and just in time the rains come, and that drab brown grass magically finds its chloroform and green is the new color. The rhubarb seems to grow an inch a day and the buds are swelling on the maple and aspen trees. The earth is having a rebirth, and this is a time for celebration.

There is no analogy, however, between my life and the seasons, as is often portrayed. The earth passes from one season to another until the cycle is complete, and then it simply starts over. This reincarnation is second nature to Mother Nature, for you see, she’s been at it a long, long time. But just because it’s October in my waning life—and that might be a generous assumption—it doesn’t damper the feelings I have for spring. I might be old and wrinkled, but I love new things and spring has an abundance of them. God willing, I will get to see them grow up once more here in Mother Nature’s own backyard.

It’s been a few days now since I started this essay. It feels good to walk upright again, and not having to shuffle my feet from one patch of ice to another. I’ve pulled my head up out of my coat collar, and stretched my neck back out. Took the truck out of four wheel drive, and put the plow away. The rakes and shovels are out of the shed, and so is the ibuprofen bottle. I keep thinking that there are more spots hurting than last year, but what the heck, if they’re hurting, then they must still have some life left in them, right? All of us need “a purpose in life” to be able to get up and go on each day. Spring gives us that purpose, and you know what? Summers on its heels, and like they say back where I come from, “It don’t get no gooder than that.”