What does spring look like in your neighborhood?
Every year it is the same. The days grow longer, warmer, fuller. It is a gradual change and yet it is also sudden. One morning, there is snow, a white blanket covering the ground. You blink and it is gone, replaced with dark mud. You blink again and everything is greens and yellows and pinks and oranges. When did that happen? Surely you had seen the buds forming before the flowers bloomed.
In the beginning, everything is still in shades of grey and brown. Perhaps there are early flowers among the weeds and the mud, but they are muted. It is not quite time for them yet. The grass drinks up the rain, soaking up the green from the earth until it can shine as bright back at the sun. If the sun ever returns to the sky. There is so much rain.
When it does, it wakes you, earlier and earlier, until you cannot remember how you had ever slept so long into the day before. The world wakes with you. Songbirds sing their cheerful greetings to the day and critters unseen for months crawl out of their dens to greet the world anew. Neighbors are out walking their dogs, or just out for a stroll, finally relishing that air as it was intended, fresh and free. The earth slowly comes alive, one day at a time, until suddenly it is teeming and humming and you wonder how you hadn’t heard it sooner. It explodes in color and you wonder again how you hadn’t seen it sooner.
One day it is cold, and you hold your jacket closed tight against the wind and the dark. Then it is bright, warm, and welcoming and your jacket suffocates you. Perhaps it is safe to store it again until winter returns. It is still too early, though, so you keep it handy. You pray it is a talisman, that by leaving it in the front closet, spring is there to stay. She is always fickle in those first few weeks. Does the groundhog truly know her heart?
The haze flows through. Your head is full of cotton and your nose threatens hourly to escape your face. The pills are there to treat the symptoms, but they cannot cure you. It will be over soon. The trees will cease their dance and life will go on.
That’s what it is all about, after all. Spring isn’t called the season of rebirth for nothing.
Notes: Something a little different to close out the week. It might just be my imagination, but I feel like this is becoming a habit as much as the writing itself. I love spring. Even if I sometimes have to muddle through allergies, it’s a beautiful time of year. The days are warm enough I can wear comfortable clothing (she says, as though she doesn’t just wear the comfiest articles she can find as soon as she gets home from work), but the nights are still cool enough I can leave a window open while I sleep.
Well, we made it through another week! Congratulations to us! We pulled through and survived yet again! It’s your turn to work this prompt now, go go GO! You got this! I’ll return, as I almost always do, with a new list of prompts on Sunday. Have a great weekend!
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Closet Full of Notebooks 