From my seat at the dining room table, I can see a slice of bright pink through the window. The skinny Eastern Redbud tree stands at the edge of the woods in full bloom . Most of the year this tree is so slender, so fragile, so spindly, that I don’t notice it.
Today though, my eyes are focused on it.. It knows something I didn’t. Spring is on its way even on this chilly February day.
When I lived in New England, the winter temperatures froze the soil, making it as rigid as cement. Ice crusted the sidewalks, stairs and streets. The most dangerous ice, however, was the wafer-thin sheets you could not see. You knew it was there only after you found yourself slipping and sliding in a frantic attempt to maintain some balance. Layers of old snow would pile up and shrink back, solidifying into granular piles of dirty gray. It had no resemblance to the white fluffy flakes that had fallen from the sky days or weeks before.
What was fun as a child became a drudgery as an adult. At the end of the driveway where the snowplows had scraped the street clean, the snow was packed hard and formed into angular chunks. My shoulders ached from shoveling; piling the mounds higher than my head I was hot under my winter coat while my nose was red from the cold.
“There’s always a thaw in January,” Mum would say with reverence. “The snow and ice will melt. We’ll have a short break from winter before it returns again in force.” Sure enough, usually in the last week of January, the temperatures would rise above freezing for several days in a row. The fog from the warm air against the cold ground would form drops of dew on windows. The snow piles along the paths would shrink and some would disappear. The top layer of ice covering the pond would turn into puddles. I could almost smell the earth softening.
Winter in North Florida is not cold; I don’t miss snow or ice. This week, it was warm enough for me to go outdoors without a sweater. Inside, I opened the windows and listened to the birds chirping. The old timers here say it is one of the warmest winters they can remember. The same is true, say my friends up North. Although we are glad, it also makes us feel uneasy. Thirteen of the warmest years since record-keeping began have occurred in the last fifteen years. It is hard to miss the photos of icebergs melting and breaking away. The number of extreme weather catastrophes around the globe are increasing year by year; droughts, massive fires, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, tornadoes make it hard not to notice that the climate is changing.
Is it more than an ordinary January thaw?
My father waited impatiently each winter for spring to come. On the day of the Winter Solstice in December, Dad would announce, “The days are getting longer. Spring is on the way!” On that day, he would begin his ritual of helping the snow to melt. On sunny days, he would go out to scoop shovel’s full of snow and ice onto the asphalt driveway. Then contented he would watch as the sun transformed the crystals into liquid.
Like my father I enjoy the green and growing plants sprouting up from the earth when spring arrives. It is like a magic trick. Unobserved tree buds stretch out and spread into delicate leaves. “Nothing up my sleeve,” nature says. Each year I am a bit chagrined by how this season takes me by surprise again and again
The tender blossoms uncurl, risking damage from frenzied winds, weighty downpours of rain and drastic changes in temperatures. I watch the naïve fledgling birds as they fend for themselves, pecking for juicy larvae. An alert kitten crouches watching these vulnerable chicks. The prey and predators are hard to separate one from the other.
The older ones are at risk during this season too. With each new generation, I know my days are shortened. The dampness from the earth below my feet awakens the pain in my arthritic ankles. I am reminded that I will return to that soil one day myself. I will dissolve as the melting snow.
My Turn 