Week 8Winter Week 8
I turned to see a crow standing in a low point in the creek, dipping its head in and whacking the surface hard with its wings, again and again, whap whap, whap whap whap, which I took to mean, of course, take your head out of your ass and be glad.
—Ross Gay, The Book of Delights
For more than a month, all we’ve had is rain. Until today, nothing but low skies and rain except for one early morning hour of something that might have been snow in the diamond air: white pellets winking past like falling stars, seen only in the periphery, invisible head-on. The cold that day brought the bluebirds to my heated birdbath for a drink.
The sky the bluebird carries on his back, as Thoreau observed, is nothing to the blue of this February sky. The golden kernels in my feeder are nothing to the light bouncing off the limbs of the oak tree reaching into the blue sky. I knew the day would be warm and bright before I opened my eyes.
The cardinals are the first to sing, and their song always heralds a pretty day in winter. Birdy, birdy, birdy, birdy, the male bird sings. Birdy, birdy, birdy, birdy, cheer, cheer, cheer. He seems to believe that this warm day, coming as it does on the heels of a cold spell, is surely the beginning of spring, the season that is the point of all his singing: the season of courtship and mating, of nest building and nest guarding, of mate feeding and egg laying. The season of baby birds.
After an unseasonable time at home, my own babies are preparing to fly the nest come springtime. Our middle son graduated from college and commenced his job search just before the pandemic began. Phone interviews went well, on-site interviews were scheduled, and then everything shut down. It took four months for him to find a job during the hiring freezes of that time, and meanwhile his younger brother had come home, too, as his own college classes moved online. They couldn’t believe it—so close to true freedom, and here they were again. “How is it possible that we’re living in our childhood bedrooms?” they would say as the pandemic dragged on.
“I can’t believe we’re living in our childhood bedrooms,” they were still saying a year later, even after the youngest had graduated, too, and even after vaccines had made life more livable again. They were both fully employed by then, but one had a job that required so much travel it made no sense to pay rent, and the other could not yet afford what landlords can charge in this growing city. Nearly two years after the pandemic began, they are finally looking for a place to share, hoping to be gone by spring.
I have loved having them here. Their older brother taught me that when they leave home this time, they will be leaving for good, so I am trying hard to be patient with winter this year, to settle into the season of waiting with more joy than I ever managed during winter’s last gasp in the past.
But I have grown weary of walking on a silent trail, where the only sounds are my own footfall and the huff of my own breath on the uphill climb and the creak of bare branches in the wind. I am ready for the ringing bells of the spring peepers and the dawn chorus of the songbirds. I am ready for leaves to unfold on the branches and on the ground cover of the forest floor. I am ready for the moss to wake into a new green on the fallen trees, fallen so many years ago they no longer resemble trees. Unlike my sons, I am not ready to move past the past, but I am ready for something different, too, something new and urgent and thrumming with blood and sap and life. I am learning that it is possible to want two contrary things at once. I want nothing to change. I want everything to change.
A day like today is a reminder that in most ways, dangerous ways, spring is already here, heaving in on blue skies and puffy clouds and sunshine, long before its time. It’s impossible not to worry. It’s also impossible not to glory in the glorious day. “Birdy, birdy, birdy, birdy,” sings the redbird. “Birdy, birdy, birdy, birdy, cheer, cheer, cheer.” My heart sings, too. I can’t help myself. Beauty and light will always be their own reward.