The Spring of Us

One of the best parts of spring is the message of hope—freedom, resurrection, rebirth. The temperatures rise and dreary brown earth hosts green shoots. Every year I listen with anticipation for the first trill of hummingbird wings. My heartbeat quickens when I hear it. This year I anticipated the arrival of the hardy little birds (some we recognize from previous years) and my husband had a feeder filled and ready. “Spring is here!” I texted to my daughter.

Even miserable allergies can’t dampen my enthusiasm for buds on our lilac bushes. They usually freeze off at some point so we rarely enjoy flowers, but at least the foliage eventually appears. There’s something warming about naked branches decorated with buds bursting into tiny green leaves. Granted, our yard is mostly populated with evergreens that thumb their pine cones at winter, but I look for their fresh green growth that seems to glow after a rain.

The hours of light stretch, lending cheer both earlier and later—spectacular sunrises and sunsets. In town, we can delight in the flowering trees and bushes, tulips, daffodils and hyacinths. Events crowd the regional calendar as people feel liberated from cold and communicable diseases and venture out of their houses.

I can’t help wondering what we can do with all this renewed optimism. How can we put it to work besides in gardens and spring cleaning? First, it’s a good time to throw off winter’s pessimism. We can look dark deeds straight in the eye and know we have the energy to transform them. As Nature dons her favorite attire, we tug on our best selves, throwing aside the cynicism and resentments that flourished in winter’s gloom. We feel invincible, and so we are.

Baby bunnies hop into our yard. How courageous to be the bottom of the food chain and yet dare to join the birds as they gobble up the seed we share. On nearby ranches, little calves with sweet faces tear at my heart as their mothers dote on them, when I know their eventual fate. But still they play. I wonder if the immigrant children in the incarceration camps play. I’m sure they do, considering the children in the extermination camps of WWII played when they had sufficient energy. Did you ever read I NEVER SAW ANOTHER BUTTERFLY about the hidden forbidden drawings of children who were eventually gassed? Or watch the lost boy in the beginning of LION? Children do their best to survive.

If innocent imprisoned children and baby bunnies and newborn calves can insist on living through their slim slice of existence, how can I be less resilient than they? To contribute to the freedom, resurrection, and rebirth of spring, I want to find a way to enrich the best of life. I want to spread love and joy and a belief that everything can be better. I want to share the spring of me.