Rushing To the Stillness

I woke up today to a balmy wind winding its way through the still bare Sycamore trees in our front yard. Spring on the heels of this wind and the sun trying so hard to crack through the veneer of gray that has laid so thickly over everything this winter. Though surely some would argue with me, I can smell the subtle shift in the air. It smells green. That smell that only smells like what it is~ wet dirt and tiny growing things and clean scrubbed air. This is potentially wishful thinking but I am loath to stick my head back into the bitter wind and snow and fur lined boots that I have decisively put away hoping that the silent voodoo prayer I've said keeps the Rose of Sharon budding in my backyard.

As cliche as it is, the coming of spring has always been one of my favorite times of year. After fall it's my favorite season. Interesting only to me in its banality but, the dichotomy of ending and beginning in such a painfully literal way always touches me. As prosaic and played out as this little drama of mine is, I can't help it. I've tried. I've kept it to myself but I'm a sucker for that stuff and I'll take the cheesiness and the cliche and silly romance of it all. These are the days I scrounge my bookshelves for Walt Whitman, Annie Dillard and Aldo Leopold. I want the voices of poetic and slaying beauty only their brand of prose can bring. I want to soak long and low in those pages, emerging from the work as green and tender as the new and budding world.

My son was born in the flush of autumn. Fire in the air and ripe falling fruit and woolen scarves coming out of hiding. My daughter though, is slated to arrive in the midst of this verdant and slow unfurling. In this first raw and opening breath after a cold and wet winter, small shoots of Crocus and Iris gently finding their way towards the buttery sun. To try and express how fitting I think this is will simply fall flat. I have decided to simply revel in the symmetry.

Just like the trees lining the street where I live, I am full to bursting these days too. The alphabet of my daughter's elbows and knees becoming an increasingly insistent presence in my body. So much so that I can no longer ignore her flipping and stretching. She is heavy and busy and half the time I wonder what she's doing in there. Sometimes it feels like she cannot be contained but I know better. I have a feeling this is going to be the case with her for years to come and I fear it is just as my mother said it would be, Karma is a bitch...

And so I wait. I am now quietly and patiently resigned to counting down the days until her arrival. The waiting is delicious and in the interim, in the small fingers of time between now and then, I will read. And I will rejoice that the once a year, the world has the gorgeous audacity to make herself all over again.