Spring. Finally.

Nature gives to every time and season some beauties of its own; and from morning to night, as from the cradle to the grave, it is but a succession of changes so gentle and easy that we can scarcely mark their progress.”  

-Charles Dickens

Finally.  Any signs of winter have disappeared.  Blue permeates the skies now for the last several days and the heat of the sun is warming the lingering chill of the morning air.  Instead of the clacking of the heat traveling through the baseboards, each morning I am awoken by the sounds of busy chirping birds and the smell of fresh cut grass.  My neighbors' gardens are filled with tulips or daffodils or brightly colored azaleas announcing the beginning of spring.  I have even spotted a few bushy tailed bunnies on the lawns, taunting Sonny with their freedom.  They make it official.  Finally.

Nature is such a resplendent presence in our lives, if we just take time to pay attention.  Its simplicity is so profound, yet perhaps because its course is so predictable we forget to pay homage.  Instead we fill our days with preparation only because we must and then we’re sorry because we haven’t stopped to enjoy it enough before we notice it’s gone.    

Mark, my handyman husband, is out in the backyard now, opening our pool.  He has already re-stained the deck, put out the fire-pit and patio sets and hung the awning on the gazebo.  He is only halfway done.  He still has planting to do both in the front and back yards and needs to replace two lampposts and broken window screens.  I’m sure the list is much longer than that, which adds to Mark’s anxiety.  We are hosting the annual 4^th of July celebration this year with my friends and then we are hosting the baby naming, scheduled for September 8^th.  The yard must look pristine. 

Lindsay has admitted that she waddles now.  Her belly is ripening.  Nature’s course tells us 4 weeks 6 days are left to the countdown of the arrival of our spring sweetheart.  Scott is working on her room.  It was gutted and re-insulated.  New sheetrock was hung and new windows and carpeting will be installed.  I hope all this gets done before Lindsay gives birth.  She was 17 days early and her room was not ready when she was born; Mark and my brother had to paint it while Lindsay and I were in the hospital. 

This week my sister, Claire, is here to visit from Arizona and got a chance to see Lindsay pregnant with her first great niece and even got to feel a few kicks.  She bought her a battery operated Gund bear that plays peek-a-boo with a blanket that entertained us for a while.  It’s hard to believe how fast our own children have grown and that we’re at this milestone now of ushering in the next generation. 

While I was making space in the closet of my guest room for my sister, coincidently, a picture of the three of us, my two sisters and me, fell to the floor.  It was from the day of my brother’s bar mitzvah.  We were standing in front of the mirror in my parent’s bedroom- that same mirror that resides in my mother’s room in my house today.  We were lovely- my older sister, Margie was 21 at the time, I was 19 and Claire was 17.  Our skin was flawless, looking as smooth as glass, my sister Margie’s neck like a swan as she stood between us.  Such pretty young girls we were.  Long ago.  It’s coincidental that this photo is a mirror reflection of us, as if it was meant for me to stumble upon it in my late 50s and reflect on time passing– how those three young ladies have become three middle-aged women. 

When Lindsay was little, one of her favorite books was a Golden Book, titled, Where Did the Baby Go? 

It was about a little girl who found a photograph of a baby wearing a big floppy hat.  She asked her mother who this baby was and where did the baby go?  Her mother didn’t tell her; she just kept giving her clues, which led her in a search throughout her house looking for the baby.  Finally with the last clue- “the baby used to like to play dress-up with her mother’s clothes”- the little girl finds the same floppy hat in her mother’s closet and when she puts the hat on, she realizes that she was that baby. 

I used to read that book to Lindsay over and over again.  I have searched for it in my house to give it to Lindsay to read to my granddaughter, but to no avail.  I gave up looking in the house and in the stores and was able to find a very old, weathered copy on the Internet, which just arrived in the mail. 

The night I stumbled upon the photo of me and my sisters in the closet, I also found a small container with all of Lindsay’s and Kimberly’s favorite children’s books.  I opened it to find the Mother Goose Nursery Rhymes books and many others.  As I went through them, the memories of years past came flooding back and filled me with an ache I could never describe in words.  And then, in the midst of all this emotion, there it was, serendipitously– the book, Where Did the Baby Go?, in almost perfect condition, like an old friend I haven’t seen in years, but still looking the same as I’ve always remembered. 

I am looking forward now to a spring that will bring new joys and new memories.  And even though I sometimes yearn for the past, it wouldn’t be there if I had never yearned for the future.   

  

“Time it was

And what a time it was, it was

A time of innocence

A time of confidences

Long ago it must be

I have a photograph

Preserve your memories

They're all that's left you”

― Paul Simon, lyrics

The Berman Sisters: Claire, Margie and Jeannie (me),  [1975]