Spring

I fell in love with spring the winter before Jeff and I got married. Not in springtime proper, but in the last few weeks of winter before, in anticipation, when green life was just sneaking around the edges of things like a cat that hovers near an open doorway, making a dash inside the house at the last moment before the door slams shut. 

My mom and girlfriends and I were deep in wedding prep at the time, and I’d find myself driving 520 across Lake Washington every morning to my job downtown, noting the bare-limbed treescape in the arboretum as I passed, wishing, almost willing the trees to bud and blossom in time for the guests I knew would be making that same drive the day of the wedding a couple months later. (There’s nothing like the greens and blues of a sparkling PNW summer, and I desperately hoped our out-of-towners would get at least a peek of what that was like.) So many mornings I spent ogling those trees for new life, squinting and rubbernecking as I drove by in hope of discovering even the tiniest flush of color from brown and gray to amber or burnt rose hinting of tender green shoots ready to unfurl. Then one day, what felt like overnight, the cat dashed in the door, and the trees were suddenly awake in delicate, verdant array. Lime. Chartreuse. Parakeet and shamrock green. All awake, and to my delight, with several weeks to spare before the wedding. I think probably up ‘til then in my life spring had been more a placeholder season than glory for its own sake. Every year since, spring has been a living wonder. Every year I’ve watched eagerly for first sight of lime green life in tree boughs.

Last year was different though. I remember driving my daughter to school and turning the occasional corner to catch sight of a Japanese Maple just starting to unfold or a single cherry blossom tree in bloom a little too early in the season, and I’d feel a subtle rise in me, a surprised little… something. Resentment? Yep. That’s what it was. As I turned the emotion over again and again curiously in my mind, I eventually realized why it was there. I realized I resented life continuing to move forward when I was still in a personal season of winter, of grief, not yet ready or able to move on. I’d only just begun processing certain sadness at the time, and it stung to be reminded the world doesn’t stop for one person’s story. But you know what? Spring did come. And winter did end. Then summer and fall and winter again. Whether I was ready for it or not. And all the while the trees continued to stand watch in their seasons. 

This tree catches my attention almost every single time I pass by, which is relatively often, and last week I finally chose to stop, capture it, and be captured by it. Waking from winter can be hard. It’s been a long season without words for me. A long season of sleep and heavy emotions. Like for you maybe too. But I’m grateful to feel my heart quietly rising to welcome the flush of spring again this year, as it should. I don’t know what the year holds. I can feel music making its way back into my fingers, and I have a thing or two gently percolating that I’m excited about. Mostly right now I want to be present to the turning of the season and the hope that the promise of spring brings. 

“Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
    and come away,
for behold, the winter is past;
    the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth,
    the time of singing has come,
and the voice of the turtledove
    is heard in our land.
The fig tree ripens its figs,
    and the vines are in blossom;
    they give forth fragrance.
Arise, my love, my beautiful one,
    and come away.”

 - Song of Solomon 2:10b-13 esv