The lesson of snowballs in spring

Time to start anew

As I write this on a warm spring day, I’m looking at a snowball tree outside my window. I don’t know its real name; I call it the snowball tree because it’s covered in huge, round white blossoms like snowballs. And I mean covered! I can’t see any leaves, and it’s at least 15 feet tall and as wide. This tree is so spectacular, it dominates the entire area.

Spring came early this year. The daffodils were especially vibrant, blowing their yellow trumpets everywhere, in unlikely places, like along roadsides.

The forsythia surprised me with bursts of flowering branches before I was ready. It all seemed too soon, and I kept thinking, “Go back! You’re going to freeze!” We always have one hard frost in April, when all the early buds turn brown. But not this year.

Every year spring arrives in all its splendor and every year it surprises us, as if for the first time. The tender green of new leaves, the song of birds returning from their winter vacations, that fresh smell in the air, all remind us of new beginnings, of rebirth. Again. Every year it’s the same and every year it’s all new.

Spring is a between time, after the icy cold of winter and before the sweltering heat of summer. It’s the season when we can open our doors and windows and forget about both the furnace and the air conditioner.

But mostly it’s a time of renewal, a time to examine ourselves to see where we’ve been and where we’re going. We think of New Year’s as the time of beginnings, but spring is when newness happens. Spring is when we’re all babies again!

New Year’s is when life goes dormant, establishing itself underground, setting its roots. In spring we sprout, blossom, and set our path for growth. We can do it intentionally or unwittingly, but inevitably we do it.

We can assess our advantages and evaluate our handicaps — how rich is the soil we are grounded in, what is our sun exposure? Of course that analogy goes only so far. There is far more involved in the growth of a person than of a plant.

The snowball tree will soon lose its showy blossoms, and the hard work of new growth will take over. I don’t have blossoms to shed, but I’m relieved that my health problems of the past year are largely resolved and I feel almost new again. How appropriate! What remains is to determine my path forward in other ways, how I need to grow in the coming year.

It’s encouraging that in this time of brutal hardship and trauma in the world, the birds still sing, the leaves still sprout, the trumpeting daffodils still spread their bold yellowness. We haven’t much time until summer is here. But for now it’s spring, and we can begin again.

In the words of Emily Dickinson, “In the name of the Bee—/And of the Butterfly—/And of the Breeze—/ Amen!”