This morning at breakfast, I drizzled some maple syrup on my porridge. This time of year, as the frost begins to loosen in the ground and the ice on the pond is covered with a thin film of pooled water, I can feel the sap running in the woodlands of North America. So too, in my soul.

When the sap runs, the earth is approaching the vernal equinox. Daylight is becoming longer, yet the nights are still below freezing temperatures. The earth is softening and it becomes mud season.

Drip, drip, drip, the sweet water flows down through the trees. I sense it within me too. Somewhere, maple trees have been tapped with sap spouts. The tin buckets used for centuries to carry the sweet water to the tanks may have been replaced with plastic tubing; the wood stoves used to heat the evaporators may have been modernized as well; I do not know. Nevertheless, I have no doubt that the steam rising from boiling sap will infuse the winter breeze with the aroma of maple syrup. The tree sap is best when the hillsides are still covered in a thick blanket of wet snow. The bird songs have changed to establish territory for new homes. I listen for the chickadee outside my window, as it now sings the tune of “Sweet spring.”

One of my favorite possessions is a slice of a maple tree, cut from my uncle’s sugar orchard in Nova Scotia. It was a horizontal cut. One side is still rough from the saw that was used to sever the tree. The other side, my father sanded and then shellacked to enhance the rings within the outer bark. As a child, I often sat and counted each concentric circle that recorded the number of years of life for this particular tree. The innermost rings are smaller and difficult to count. Then as the rings expand out, the first scar marks show where the holes were drilled to extract the sap. The scars reach deep inward through several years of growth in my slice of maple tree, but they never enter the core.

My uncle felled many trees to light the fires in his sugar camp. He began setting aside wood in the summertime so that it would dry and be right for keeping the fires burning long and hot.

It takes a lot of tree sap to make syrup, about four times the amount of sap for each bottle of syrup. The trees will have held onto more sap following a winter that has been consistently cold. And the sap will be sweeter in the years when there has been a hard winter.

Like the sweetness in life, the sap supply is dependent on several factors. The age of the trees; the hardship of a cold weather; a thick blanket of snow covering on the ground; nights below freezing with warm sunny days; and, hard labor all produce more sweetness to be collected.

As I ate my breakfast cereal this morning, I mused about all of this. And, I remembered the taste of sugar on snow. Spring is on the way.

She had made arrangements, many years before her death, to have her body donated to a medical university. She wanted to be of use even after her death. She wanted to give one last part of herself to others. But most of all, she didn‘t want any money to be spent for a burial or funeral service. She didn’t want any fuss made over her.

Receiving a gift was not a pleasant experience for my mother. For years, my Dad and I gave her presents only to see her face wrinkle with disapproval. Sometimes she would unwrap a gift and criticize what was inside: “Whatever possessed you to get this for me?” The item was either labeled as “too expensive,” or “too frivolous.” Her words were sometimes angry, indicating her disappointment at the way we had misjudged her wishes.

My mother was indeed a frugal woman, better at saving than spending. She rarely purchased clothes for herself. For years, she made many of her own dresses and knitted most of the scarf’s, mittens and socks. Non-handmade items of clothing that she wore were mostly hand-me-downs. As I grew to be taller than she by the time I was in my early teens, she took possession of the blouses, skirts, slacks and jackets that I had purchased for myself when they became too small for me.

When someone would give her a new pair of gloves or stockings as a gift, she would simply be silent and later we would see that the item had been hidden in the bottom drawer of the dresser that she and my father shared. It baffled me, and sometimes left me feeling helpless at holidays. Over the years, my father and I spent hours selecting presents that we thought might just be the one thing that would make her smile and say sincerely, “thank you, just what I wanted!” It didn’t happen and I never quite understood why.

Now I believe that in addition to modesty and thrift, she valued time more than money. The birthday cake that she made especially for me each spring required not just fresh ingredients but, skill, care and time to prepare.

Eventually, I got the message. I started knitting her vests and sweaters or making her a loaf of special bread when I visited her. In between holidays, I often purchased clothing, books, even jewelry with my mother in mind. I would use an item and then tell her I no longer needed or wanted it. When she was in her 70’s and 80’s she had a much more youthful wardrobe than most of her peers because of these hand-me-down gifts. And these humble presents seemed to respect her values more than any gift tied up with a bow of ribbon.