The joyous surprise of spring 2021
Every year toward the end of March I look outside and think “No way.”
No way can this brown and gray slop turn into spring.
Somehow it always does, a soft green halo of new growth appearing first, as subtle as an Impressionist painting, along the tops of the deciduous trees closest to the sun.
From there comes an explosion of color and life, bright yellow forsythia, lime green lilac buds adorning stark winter limbs, purple crocuses and hyacinth in places I forgot I planted, and everywhere, clusters of daffodils, the likes of which stopped Wordsworth from wandering lonely.
Spring always comes. And I am always surprised, at the little points of hostas and Solomon’s Seal, suddenly popping out of the still hard ground they disappeared into in the fall, so many newborn angels come back to point the way to heaven.
I suppose I shouldn’t be
so amazed. Spring is as predictable as the other seasons, as strong and intentional as other manifestations of nature — including our own human spirit.
And yet, from my Southern-born perspective, a Northern spring feels like a miracle.
In the South, in Louisiana and the Carolinas where I grew up, spring is
part of a continuum, one warmish season next to another. Grass in the South stays green yearround so that when spring comes, it’s hard to tell what started when.
In northern climes, the juxtaposition is dramatic. Winter is brown, gray, frigid and forever. Until suddenly it’s not. In one fell swoop, we go from shivering by the fire to
gathering in the front yard, robins flying in and out of our periphery, talking perennials with the neighbors.
Like magic.
Despite being explained by science, spring feels like a miracle we have earned with our suffering.
We become as little animals, surprised by good fortune when the sun returns, released from our caves into this light-filled season we couldn’t fathom in the dark of winter – maybe especially so this winter.
This winter was dread going in. If the COVID-19 disease itself didn’t get us, the social isolation of being cooped up inside would. We bought outdoor heat lamps so we could socialize outside and commiserated with our friends about how to pull off a socially distanced Thanksgiving and Christmas.
And yet, like the crocus that can survive 20 degrees outside, we found we were more resilient than we imagined possible.
Although many Americans tragically did not live to see Christmas, many more survived to figure out creative ways to experience the holidays. We found ways to stay connected. We also found our way to hope: As fall ended last year, I planted 150 bulbs, a conscious assurance to myself that spring would come again.
Those bulbs are now part of this year’s surprise, new daffodils outside my bedroom window, irises readying, tulip plants proffering thick leaves with a full promise of red and pink petals soon to come.
The blooms and buds are thriving despite winter’s last hurrah, come this year on the first day of April, three days before Easter. While the Easter Bunny was filling baskets, and hopeful masses were lined up at vaccination clinics, temperatures fell to the 20s, and snow covered the budding landscape.
As quickly as the snow fell, so did it melt. Temperatures warmed back up. And the daffodils, their yellow faces scrubbed fresh by the snow, hardier perhaps for having weathered the storm, prevailed.
Spring strikes a repeating theme, as it turns out, of continuity and survival against the odds, a theme that is especially familiar when I consider this past year.
Spring, I must come to see, is simply an echo of my own miraculous nature, which may be why it both delights and befuddles me so.
“Hope springs eternal in the human breast,” wrote the poet Alexander Pope. And no more so than in the surprise of spring.