"But seriously, imagine this: A pug on a Ferris wheel is an awesome mental picture."
This is pretty much the level of conversation I'm up for an a Friday night—dreaming about adorable pug pictures that would instantly go viral.
With some coaxing, I might also be up for talking about how my day went or what I'm looking forward to over the weekend, but let's face it, by Friday night, I just want to wear my pajama pants and lay on the couch.
On this particular Friday night, I was doing just that, only replace the pajama pants with workout clothes. By some burst of energy miracle, I had made it to the gym after work, where, while doing sit-ups and push-ups and calf raises, I imagined that I was already at home, curled up under an afghan knitted by my great-grandmother.
Workout motivation tip: You know how you're supposed to envision how you want your workout to go? I do this when I have a race: I imagine what the race will be like, including such realistic details as "that panicked feeling you get when you realize you need to spit but that there are too many people around to do it safely."
A little mental preparation can help in a big way, but then I've found that when you're actually in the midst of your workout/run, it's best to imagine what you'll be doing later. Pep talks can only get you so far; it's far better to imagine the coffee you'll drink at brunch after the race {and the bacon! Never forget to think about the bacon!}.
Or in the case of my Friday night workout, it was better to think about laying down and not having to think or do much of anything for the rest of the night. Distract yourself: That's my workout motivation tip, one I hope you'll use and report back to me about how wonderfully it worked.
So I was on the couch, texting a good friend who was being a good sport about my typical Friday-evening-randomness, when the pug on a Ferris wheel image came to me and I sent her that message above.
You're probably either in awe of my imagination or concerned for my thought process {I'm assuming the former, by the way}, so I will offer this by way of explanation for my pug image: The carnival is in town.
Doesn't that explain everything? How could I walk past a Ferris wheel every day on my way to the train and not think of how a pug would react to spinning high above her town in what is essentially a swinging bucket?
{You're thinking about it now, too, aren't you?}
Here's how the conversation went:
Me: I am about to walk Miss Daisy, but then I really need to eat. You know those times when nothing sounds good? This in one of those times.
Allow me to jump in here and say—I had so much to eat at home. There was roast chicken and vegetables, eggplant gratin, a salad with an orange balsamic vinaigrette, and pear clafoutis. I could've made French toast or an omelet or a grilled cheese sandwich. Heck, I could've eaten cereal.
But every time I thought of something to eat, my inner toddler screamed, "NO!" That girl is so demanding and picky sometimes.
Me: BUT WAIT: I just had an excellent dinner thought. The carnival is in town. CORNDOG.
Patient Friend Who Listened to My Dinner Decisions and Hopefully Didn't Roll Her Eyes: Corndog all the way. If I were with you, I'd get a funnel cake. And cotton candy.
That response proves why we're friends and why I'm 99% sure she wasn't rolling her eyes at my dinner quandary: because she gets just as excited by food as I do.
Me: Then Daisy and I shall ride the Ferris wheel.
Patient Friend: Hahahahaha....
Me: But seriously, imagine this: A pug on a Ferris wheel is an awesome mental picture.
And to the carnival we went, my pug and I. The night was cool—shockingly cool for mid-May, and I don't just mean that I had to wear a light spring jacket. I mean that it had snowed earlier in the day, an occurrence that flummoxed us all, even though we have just survived the coldest, snowiest winter I can remember. Snow in mid-May? What are we, Minnesotan?
I formed a plan as I walked over: if there were a lot of people at the carnival, Daisy and I would keep walking and I would force myself to suck it up and eat some roast chicken at home, even though that is no corndog. Crowds tend to overwhelm her, and I didn't know how safe it would be for a pug in a carnival. She might be taken in by one of the carnies, unaware that the games were fixed and she'd most likely not win a new stuffed animal.
But the cool night kept most people away from the carnival because who wants a lemon shake-up when the temperature is much closer to freezing than you'd like to admit? Giving Daisy a few notes on dealing with carnies, I walked her up to the corndog stand.
As I paid, I felt her tug on the leash, and I looked down to see an absolutely panicked pug staring up at the Ferris wheel.
It must've been the bright lights—don't they draw us all in? But given how Daisy was rooted to the ground, frozen as all those bright lights twinkled towards her from the slowly-rotating Ferris wheel, I can only assume that it looked like some sort of giant fireball coming straight at her.
While I know she couldn't possibly have understood that 1) I had suggested taking her on a Ferris wheel, 2) I had most definitely been joking when I said that, and 3) pugs aren't allowed on Ferris wheels to begin with, I still felt bad for even thinking about it. You would've, too, if you'd seen her cower from the Ferris wheel. In fact, if you had been there, you probably would've been yelling at me at this point and taking away my corndog.
I bent down to reassure Miss Daisy, and my movement broke her spell. She looked away from the fireball, shook her head, and suddenly realized that all around her was a magic land of dropped food. French fries. Corndog sticks that still had some breading on them. And her favorite: chewed gum.
She did her spin of excitement and took to licking everything she could find that looked like food, and even some things that were clearly just rocks.
Oh, the carnival! It holds such possibility, doesn't it? One minute, you can be rigid with terror and the next moment, you can be eating bad-for-you food. This is what we all know about the carnival, and this is what Miss Daisy experienced for the first time on Friday night.
------------
PS I was going to insert a picture of a pug on a Ferris wheel, but the Internet holds no such picture that I can find. I believe this is an untapped adorable picture market.
I did, however, discover through auto-fill {you know, when Google tries to guess ahead to what you're searching for, based on what other people have searched for} that the following searches are popular {as they should be}:
- "pugs riding in cars"
- "pugs riding unicorns"
- "pug riding a Roomba"
- "pugs in The Hobbit"
- "pugs in fancy dress"
"The thing I don't like," I told a friend as we drove through Glen Ellyn, "are people who still have up their outside Christmas decorations. I realize that it's been -40 degrees out and snowy and dangerous, so I can cut some slack for still having the decorations out. But why do they still light them?"
I was speaking specifically about this house that still has up those blow-up outdoor decorations. You know, the kind that inflate with a fan and tend to dance around a bit, as if Santa and his elves are studying to be Elvis. They're noisy and they're big, and even though we are now months from Christmas, I can't think of them without feeling quite bah-humbug.
And I can't help but think of them since a house in my neighborhood still has them up.
"Christmas is long gone! Let it go! It's practically spring!" Perhaps because I don't have enough to be frustrated about in my life, I decided to make up some aggression and stress related to Christmas decorations—maybe, but I'm going to think about that later. Right now, I'm going to say:
BLESS THE GOOD LORD, IT'S PRACTICALLY SPRING.
In fact, wait, no, let me revise that: as of today, IT IS SPRING.
We have made it, everyone. It has been a long, cruel, strange, record-breaking winter, but we have survived, and for that we deserve a prize.
Prizes I Would Accept Related to Spring
- Tulips
- Sleeping with the windows open
- Asparagus
- Taking Little Pug for a long walk and watching her try to jump over puddles as all the snow melts
- Speaking of which: MELTED SNOW {so I guess I'm saying that I would accept water as a prize}
- Reading outside
- Green grass
- Daffodils
- People taking down their Christmas decorations
Ah, yes, the Christmas decorations. I think it's safe to say that I was ranting about them because I was upset that it was March and still so snowy and icy out, but it's illogical to be upset at the weather. I took it out on Christmas decorations instead, which, by the way, is the smart way to handle frustration: displacement and getting upset over something trivial.
After I finished my rant, huffing and puffing as I glared at the Santa blow-up, my friend cautiously said, "But don't you still have up a Christmas wreath inside?"
Oh.
Well.
Technically, yes.
But really, when you think about it, why limit wreaths to just Christmas time? They are, much like snowmen and salt-stained snow boots, a winter decoration. They bring the cheer of that holiday season—when we all marvel at having a tree in our house—into what would be the more blah months of January and February.
Yes, that sounds good.
I tried this reasoning on my friend, who said nothing in return and instead let a pointed silence fall as the best way of pointing out my hypocritical ways.
I wondered, at that point, if I should also remind her that I have on my kitchen windowsill this wooden cutout thing of snowmen. One of them is holding a sign that says "Let It Snow."
Now, clearly, that is a winter decoration, but keeping it up all the way through March may have been sending mixed signals to the weather. A wintry mix, if you will.
On the one hand, I say that while the snow is lovely, I believe it should be done because I'd like to go outside sans snowboots for the first time in months.
On the other hand, I stick a sign by the window encouraging MORE SNOW.*
And on both hands, the only conclusion is: I brought all this snow on us by leaving up my snow signs for far longer than I should.
I am sorry. I will buy everyone tulips to make up for it.
* I should also point out, but in a place that maybe not many people will read it**, that I also have a cross-stitched decoration up on my bedside table—it's of a snowman, and my grandma made it. He looks delighted at the snowflakes all around him {as he should since they're his lifeblood}, and he's grinning at a sign that says "Let It Snow."
** And I should point out that on my kitchen window, I have these fun sticky letters that spell out {of course} "Let It Snow." Man, I really seem to be stuck in an obvious rut with my winter decorations.
This morning, walking the little pug, I smelled spring. That smell of thaw and melt when the world is soaking up the winter.
Oh, I know it's just a passing promise for now.
More cold weather is coming over the weekend, and this smell of spring will disappear into that frozen smell of car exhaust. That is the smell the snow takes on after just a day on the ground. Turning gray, it is an ugly reminder of the price of transportation, just as the soot-covered cathedrals in Europe were a reminder of the price of industrialization.
When the snow turns gray and the air is so cold, all I can smell is exhaust(ion).
But no need to think of that now, on this day when breathing in the air feels life-giving {as I suppose it always should, but when it is -3 out, breathing in feels like a struggle}.
No need to think of the cold to come on a day when you can just start to see the grass emerging from under the snow—just at the edge of the sidewalks. It's matted down, probably experiencing the grass-equivalent of what happens to your hair when you wear a hat for too long, only in this case, the hat is the snow that has been crushing the snow for what must've been years.
It has been years since I breathed in warm air while walking the little pug, hasn't it? That's what my soul seems to remember, but smelling the spring this morning made my soul remember that there are warmer days to come. Soon.
The rain came down so hard and fast this morning that a river sprang up in the yard.
The water raced down the slight hill from the appropriately-named Hillside Street, past a house that must've been holding its breath in an attempt to remain watertight—and flowed, finally, into a parking lot.
----------
As a sidenote, "raining cats and dogs" is a ridiculous, unhelpful expression, especially if you like cats and dogs. And particularly if you own a dog who refuses to go out in the rain and instead looks at you angrily, as if you summoned this rain to hurt her.
----------
It takes just a few hours of relentless rain to remind us that just underneath the surface of the manicured lawns, the earth is still so wild. We are all still so wild.
----------
This morning, I got half a black down the street on my drive to the gym before I turned around: even exercise is not worth risking the rivers and lakes that weren't there last night. I decided to do sit-ups by the fire and chase the little pug around the apartment; that would be my high-and-dry exercise.
----------
Just an hour or so after my gym attempt, the rain had lightened to more of a gentle crying from the sky. That river in the yard is gone, and if I hadn't had to ford it this morning, pink galoshes carrying me through, I wouldn't believe that it had ever existed. I wouldn't even believe it was a possibility in this town.
The world is drenched and then
it begins anew.
Rain falls for 40 days and 40 nights
{should you build an ark?}
Careening from the sky,
wildly exploding the gray-brown drudge
that is winter.
----------
The world has been singing a dirge and now
it begins to dance.
A staccatoed beat on the roof
and the bare branches sway in time
to the rain.
Earthworms climb out of the ground,
ready to curtsy and cavort.
----------
There's a spot up on Elm
where tulips grow along the sidewalk,
as if when you crossed the street,
you stepped into Holland.
It's rained so much, a small stream
sprang up along the curb.
Pretend that's a Dutch canal, and
you are hit with a longing to read The Diary of Anne Frank,
which is not a normal longing.
----------
But
the world is a mix of pain and beauty and wow,
it showcases both in spring.
Cold rain gives way to warm-hued blooms
and don't ever let yourself forget
the green smell of the earth as it
fights back from being frozen and drowned.
Early Morning: The Spring
In the early morning, I rise
from my bed by the window,
flannel sheets with orange flowers,
my winter set I have yet to change.
There are sometimes flowers
on the the bedside table.
There are pens and cards for writing,
and always books.
The window look out
over the garage,
and always up
into the first hint-of-day sky.
----------
Whenever I can, I listen to Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac podcast, and by that I mean: when I remember to plug in my iPod and let it download all the recent episodes, I'm more likely to actually listen to the thing.
I caught up on the Almanac, as I've never called it until right now, last Friday when I took little pug on a long walk in the early spring. Every day, Garrison reads a poem, and in his voice is everything good and relatable about poetry.
Listening to him read is like being wrapped in a blanket by the fireplace. It's like the first crocus of spring, and it's like the first snowfall. When he reads poetry, you remember why we write poems in the first place: to get across a feeling, an emotion, a thought, an idea. We write them to relate to each other, and when Garrison reads poetry, I feel like all is right with the world.
During my podcast blitz on Friday, Garrison read a poem called "Morning" by Frederick Smock. {You can read it here on the Writer's Almanac site.}
And something in the three short stanzas that described a very normal morning inspired me. It made me think about what I love so much about the morning and why I always smile when I say I'm a morning person: It really is my best time of day.
So I wrote a poem in homage to that Frederick Smock "Morning," and there it is up above. I took him one better and made it about the early morning {I'm so competitive}—specifically, the early morning during spring since that's what I wake up to every day right now.
You should maybe scroll back up and read it again in your best Garrison Keillor voice. That is, by the way, the voice I hear in my head when I read my own poetry. He makes it sound so much more monumental, of course, when really all I'm doing is trying to get across a feeling.
Overnight, it became cool again: a May morning made March. {Such alliteration!}
People who sleep with their windows open woke up burrowed into the covers. As their feet hit the hardwood floor, they gasped in, a sharp intake, a shocked intake—where were their slippers?
The floor was ice; they must have their slippers.
Whoever thought they'd need slippers to keep them cozy against floors of ice on the last day of May?
The gray day makes everyone think of November. Yes, that's it exactly: today is a November day, the gray kind that makes us appreciate the golden sun, bright blue sky days of October more—in retrospect. It's always more in retrospect; when will we appreciate more in regular-spect?
This is no time to think of that now, that deep and pressing question digging in to your side like that jab you sometimes get when you run too fast.
This is no time to think of how you could be appreciating every day more; the floor is cold, you've found your slippers, and your armchair by the window is ready for you.
In the air this morning was that warm lushness.
That lusciousness.
That divine breath.
That promise of rain later on—gentle rain, not the bitter, biting rain that drives you inside, away from reminders of your own discomfort.
In the air this morning was that light touch {a glancing sensation akin to fingers ghosting over the skin} that feels very much like God has surrounded you.
Has enveloped you.
Has sighed around you.
In the air this morning was the memory of God breathing life into every little thing.
Even into me.
Dear Trees that Flower in the Spring,
I love you so much.
My, such a bold way to begin this letter to you, but I cannot contain my joy and abounding love when I see you every spring.
If I could hug you without crushing your blossoms, I would. Instead, I'll just stand under you and look straight up. From that angle, it looks like the whole world has become spring.
And standing under you and looking up, I'm sure I look a little odd to the rest of the world, but you know what, Trees that Flower in the Spring? Just being near you makes me feel like Anne of Green Gables when she's driving through the White Way of Delight with Matthew for the first time, even though you come in more colors than white.
You come in pink and purple and mauve and a kind of magenta, but I still feel like Anne when I'm near you. Thank you, dear Trees, for reminding me that I don't always have to act like a grown-up. I can be a wide-eyed girl taking in all the world has to offer.
I do, however, have two little requests for you.
One, could you arrange it to always be outside my bedroom window, no matter where I live? When I lived in Normandy, if you recall, there was a the sweetest tree outside my window that blossomed pink in the spring. After surviving a rainy Normandy winter, being able to wake up every morning to a pink tree made up for those months of lonely shivering. If I could always have a Tree that Flowers in the Spring outside my window, I would always remember that I can survive soul-scratching kinds of times.
Two, could you flower all the time and not just in spring? Or maybe you could just flower all the time until the fall and then presto magic, you could flip out your glorious and rich autumn colors.
I realize I'm really messing with nature here, and I also know that if you were here all the time, I wouldn't appreciate you as much. You'd become like grass, which is a deep, beautiful color {assuming there isn't a drought} and always feels so cool on the feet. But by about April 15, when it's greened up for the season, I stop seeing it and appreciating it: it's just another thing in the world.
And I guess I don't want you to become another thing, Trees that Flower in the Spring. Thanks for being such a special thing.
Ever pretending to be Anne of Green Gables,
Kamiah
At lunch today, I sat outside on a bench and tried to resist the urge to get in my car and drive far, far away from the office.
To a park or a forest preserve or a lake of some kind.
With spring here in full—and early—bloom, sitting a cubicle all day can be heart-wrenching. You notice the bush outside your window taking on an almost-chartreuse green as the leaves grow, and you know that it probably smells just right—of newness, growth, and possibilities.
I mean, really, don't things just feel more possible in the spring? Sure, there's that moment at New Year's when you want to make big goals of reading big books and cooking big meals. And there's that moment in the fall when your brain wants to go back to school, even if you haven't been there in years.
But in the spring, it's as if everyone you meet is a new friend, and stepping out your door in the morning is an adventure.
But sitting in front of a computer is not an adventure; it's what you did through the gray doldrums of winter. You'd much rather be out by that bush, smelling possibilities.
However, I've learned a few things from a few years of office-dwelling:
- Being inside all day only makes you appreciate outside all the more.
- You were given a lunch break for a reason. Use it for more than eating at your desk.
- Hard work is its own reward. Okay, I didn't learn that one from my years in a cubicle; that sounds more like something picked up from years of living in Iowa or from Aesop's Fables or perhaps from both places. But it's true: it can feel good to work hard, contribute something of quality, and have somewhere to go every day where you get free coffee and the chance to use your brain.
To remind me of the importance of that last point, I read a poem as I sat outside at lunch today, one that always makes me thankful to have work to do. I guess this is another thing I've learned from office-dwelling: poetry can get you through days when you'd rather be elsewhere because they bring you a smidge of beauty, right there at your office.
To be of use
Marge Piercy
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
I woke up this morning to the smell of hyacinths and rain.
I opened my eyes this morning to see daffodils almost ready to burst forth.
And I thought: what beauty, such an almost scandalous level of beauty, to be in the midst of as I start my day.
How can a day go wrong when it starts with unblemished sweetness?
When it starts with the promise of spring?
This morning, for the first time since last year, I cracked open a window in my bedroom. I have been resisting this, not because I don't want fresh air—and with the wind blowing as it has been the last few days, there is much fresh air around—but because I winter-proofed all my windows. Cracking them open for the first time would, in my mind, ruin my work.
It's a convoluted logic I use sometimes because in reality, that winter-proofing has done its job and now it's time to let the fresh air in. It's time to breathe air that has a hint of spring in it, which is a kind of air that makes me feel particularly poetry-ish.
After cracking open the window this morning, I found myself in the vet's office, waiting for Little Pug to have some x-rays taken {a story I can tell you another time}. As I sat and tried not to worry, I quickly realized I needed a distraction if this not worrying thing was going to be successful.
And so I pulled out my poetry book, the one I carry around when I feel particularly poetry-ish.
I opened to this poem—"Late Hours," and reading it both calmed me and made me realize that it was the right poem for today.
It's about windows and seasons, and here we are, in a transition season: I'm simultaneously longing for more open windows and thinking longingly of those cozy winter nights.
March is a confused time, for me at least, but this poem makes me glad for open window times and thankful that I've made it through another closed window time.
Late Hours
Lisel Mueller
On summer nights the world
moves within earshot
on the interstate with its swish
and growl, an occasional siren
that sends chills through us.
Sometimes, on clear, still nights,
voices float into our bedroom,
lunar and fragmented,
as if the sky had let them go
long before our birth.
In winter we close the windows
and read Chekhov,
nearly weeping for his world.
What luxury, to be so happy
that we can grieve
over imaginary lives.
And what a strange winter it's been. Prepared for the worse, we have gotten the mildest.
Months ago, the hardware store put up signs by the space heaters, the insulation, the firewood, and the kits for covering your windows with plastic.
The signs read: This is predicted to be the worst winter on record. Prepare now!!
It had both an apocalyptic and Boy Scout-ic feel to it, that sign, and standing in the aisle in front of rows of space heaters—designed to bring warmth to a sliver of your world, a corner of your own, a slice of your life—it was possible to feel small and cold in anticipation.
The signs suggested: Winter is inevitable. Cold is inevitable. You must find a way to create light and warmth in the dark because these months will be long and snowy and icy and dangerous.
But here we are in mid-February, and it rained last week.
When it did, the earth smelled like spring and renewal.
The world was sliced open to reveal possibility, new life, and a reminder of just how wrong we can be. The signs we look to are not always right.
When the weather turns cold again, there is a moment every year when you think, 'I will never be warm again. The earth will never come out of the winter it's heading into.'
Then you realize that it's actually 37 degrees and that it will, unfortunately but inevitably in the Midwest, get much colder.
Please tell me that you have this moment, too, so that I don't feel like such a wuss, someone so unworthy to be a descendent of my farming ancestors {and in one case, a peddling ancestor—no, for real, one of my ancestors, someone not that far back in the family tree, was a peddler}.
My moment came last night. I was walking Miss Daisy, and I had on a hat, my mittens from Norway, and a wool scarf wrapped tightly and tucked into my coat. I was shivering from the cold and yet I couldn't even really see my breath in the still night air.
It will get so much colder, and my body will acclimate.
This is the great wonder and lesson of living somewhere with four season.
The Wonder
Every few months, the scenery drastically changes, and we get to take in spring buds, humidity, falling leaves, and snow. This keeps us from much monotony because even a drive to the grocery store will eventually look different—colors, lack of colors, leaves, lack of leaves, everything in white because it's an icy-snow mess and you better hope you don't slide and you really should've put together that winter preparedness kit, etc.
Speaking of the grocery store and food, we have come so far from when food selection was limited by the seasons or canning. I feel qualified to say something like this because of the aforementioned farming ancestors.
Now, as we're all aware, you can pretty much get anything at any time of the year. Yes, there are times when certain produce is better—when it's at its peak, I do believe it's called, when what is really meant it: it's the traditional harvest time.
If you get apples in February, they won't be as peak-full as in the fall when you're supposed to be making apple pies and applesauce and whatever else you can think of to make with the five bushels of apples you somehow ended up with after apple picking.
But you can still get apples in February.
You can get strawberries in November, if you have a whim to make strawberry shortcake for Thanksgiving.
We no longer have to wait for the harvest; we no longer get the anticipation of waiting for the season's first plum and then biting into it—delicious, so sweet, and so cold. This is just to say: we have lost something when we got pulled so far off the land, and I'm glad we have the wonder of seasons to remind us that we used to be more tied to the land.
The Lesson
The seasons teach that it is possible to adapt to change. You may forget every year how cold it gets, but it won't take long for you to pull out the long underwear, find the warm gloves, and remember how cozy your home feels when you first step inside from a -20 degree day.
We're all much more adaptable than we think. We do get used to change, and the seasons remind us of our great adaptability.
This is important to remember when something so large and shifting happens in your life—that you're sure you'll never be able to adjust.
Think of things like your best friend getting married or people having babies or even you yourself getting into a relationship. I should stress that these are all good things {babies mean, for example, that you get to buy adorable clothes—little sweater vests! tiny dresses with ruffles!—and look forward to videos of the baby giggling}.
But just as we're an adaptable people, we're also a freak-out-about-change people. It's natural to see how everything will be different, and it's also natural to skip over the fact that different isn't actually synonymous with bad.
Different can be nice, once you get used to it.
Just like the humidity in the summer and the snow in the winter.
Every spring, I notice something new. This is slightly different from Anne of Green Gables' thought that every spring, everything is new.
What I mean is: every spring, I notice something new in all the newness of life around me.
Of course it isn't really new. Redbuds aren't new. But this spring, I've been looking at them as if I've never seen them before.
Have these trees always been here? What a silly thought. Yes, they have, but for years, my eyes must've glossed over them. Skipped straight from bare branches to small green buds to full leaves creating shade and dappling the sidewalk underneath with cool repose.
I've been stopping and staring so much at the redbuds this year that, for the first time in 3 years, I was late to work one Thursday morning.
I couldn't take the hurrying anymore, off to the office, off to the day, off to the projects. And so I'd walked a little more slowly, breathed a little more deeply on my morning walk with little pug.
The price of those 5 minutes was a look from my boss—you know the one—but that's a small price to pay. Insignificant when you realize that you bought more pleasure, more joy, more life with that one look.
But I never miss the tulips in the spring.
I have never not noticed tulips popping up red and yellow, black and white. Like daffodils, they are spring to me.
Daffodils are spring's first hint, first promise; tulips are its full celebration, a cacophony of unnecessary color.
For the tulips today—tulips dressing up this gray day—I have two homages:
A picture I took on a sunny morning walk.
And a poem from William Carlos Williams, that master of capturing small charms of the everyday life.
I hope you like them. I hope they make you feel springy today.
The Tulip Bed
William Carlos Williams
The May sun—whom
all things imitate—
that glues small leaves to
the wooden trees
shone from the sky
through bluegauze clouds
upon the ground.
Under the leafy trees
where the suburban streets
lay crossed,
with houses on each corner,
tangled shadows had begun
to join
the roadway and the lawns.
With excellent precision
the tulip bed
inside the iron fence
upreared its gaudy
yellow, white and red,
rimmed round with grass,
reposedly.
It has been raining for approximately 40 days.
This is an exaggeration, I know, but it's starting to feel true, and it felt especially true this morning.
It's light enough outside by 6:00—maybe even earlier because there's a zippy thrill in running in just-barely light—for me to run out there.
However, and this is perhaps me being a running wimp, I don't like starting a run in the rain. If it starts raining while I'm out there, fine. It's an adventure, a challenge, a joy: it's however I want to spin it that day to make myself keep running. {Usually the logic that works best is: If you stop, it will take longer to get home.}
So I've been running inside, and today, on my 20th lap around the track at the gym, I thought about what I miss about running outside.
Sure, there's the sun. The breeze. The crunch of gravel. The smell of barbecue {okay, that applies later in the summer and not at 6:00am, obviously}.
There's seeing the shadows lengthen and watching my own shadow stretch away from me.
Yes, there's all that to running outside.
But what I miss most about running outside is being able to spit.
There is nothing quite like that rush of spitting while you're running, although I do not under any other circumstances advocate this. In other circumstances, spitting is disgusting. Think tobacco or insulting someone by spitting on them or teenagers spitting off bridges.
But in running, you're free. You can spit and it's part of the sport.
Unless you're inside on your 20th lap, and oh, how I miss spitting.
The puddle in the parking lot is nothing more than a few drops of water and probably some oil, or maybe some other fluid that's apt to drip out of a car.
Okay, it has to be more than a few drops of water because a few drops don't a puddle make; they make a puddlette or a pudling.
But the point here—what I want you to envision—is that the puddle is small, very small. The size you could leap over in a single bound, even if you aren't Superman. Or Superwoman.
It's early April, and a very small April shower has brought this very small puddle. What makes this puddle look even smaller is that two regular-sized ducks are sitting in it.
It's like seeing grown-ups sitting in kid-sized desks at parent-teacher conferences at the elementary school: everything else around looks even smaller because these giants have taken over a room that was, until they stepped in, just the right size. The scene is a touch absurd, and you half-expect the White Rabbit to wander through muttering about how he's late, he's late, for a very important date.
The puddle was just a puddle until these ducks decided to make it a lake—a very tiny, no fish in it lake. When they landed in it, the scene became a touch absurd when just a second before, it had been nothing but a dull parking lot in a dull, completely unsurprising and expected office complex.
There the ducks float—although how can they possibly be floating?—on a puddle the size of a football player's torso.
They are next to a Honda CR-V in the parking lot, which perhaps to them look like a mountain range rising out of the concrete and so maybe they think they're in the Rockies, Canadian or otherwise.
Driving past the ducks on my way home from work, I wanted to roll down the window and ask, "Excuse me, but don't you know that Herrick Lake, a beautiful, idyllic, actual lake, is just up the road? Did you not see it? Did you not know that if you flew just a little bit more, you could reach somewhere so much better than this?"
I wanted to ask, "Why are you settling for this puddle when you could have a lake, a real lake where you could dangle your webby feet in the water and dive for bugs or whatever it is that you eat?"
It would be absurd to talk to ducks, though.
As I pulled out of the parking lot and onto the road that would take me home, I looked at the ducks in the little puddle and asked myself the same question: Where am I settling for a puddle when I could have a lake if I pushed on a little bit farther?
I don't know the answer to that, or even if that's a good question to be asking, but it came to me as I looked at the ducks and I thought I'd share.
The old couple walks towards me, he with a cane and she in a green spring jacket.
They're familiar to me, and if you've read this, they're familiar to you, too. It's the older couple I see almost every day on my walk with my little pug in the early morning.
When I wrote about them before, she had a brick-red winter coat on. It was cold, but now, there are daffodils springing up and waving their cheery heads at us and so she's switched to her green jacket.
"Well, there's my Daisy!" he says to little pug, and she sticks up her squished-in nose for a pat just where she likes it best, under the chin.
He bends down—carefully, he's carrying a cane, you know—and scratches his Daisy, who then shows her appreciation by licking his knee. For some reason.
"Oh, I see you have running shoes on," he says to me. "Are you a runner, then?"
They both look at me expectantly and with smiles of pride already itching at the corners of their mouths. Even if I weren't actually a runner, I would lie to them, just to see them smile, I think.
They are the kind of people who make you feel full but at the same time hungry for more of the day, for more people, for more smiles, for more conversations. I don't know how they do it, although I think their secret is in old age, a life spent together, and a good walk every morning.
"Yes, I run," I tell them, and she claps a little.
She really does. She throws her head back and she throws her hands together, and she says, "Oh, that's so wonderful for you!"
I tell them about my 10-mile race coming up and we have a little moment imagining Daisy trying to run with me, and then she says, "Yesterday, we walked all the way to the school on Main Street. You know which one I'm talking about? That was like a marathon for us. But then we got to have a bagel."
And that sounds like a good day to me: a long walk and then a reward.
It can be a long anything, you know. A long day at work. A long run. A long conversation. A long to-do list.
And then a simple little reward: I like this idea.
"All right, we have to get to church now," they told me, and Miss Daisy and I turned, our shadows stretching long in front of us as we walked away from the morning sun.
Continuing my trip down memory lane, here's another snippet from my time in France. I guess I should say this is a trip down la rue des souvenirs, if I want to be all French-y about it.
I wrote this for my hometown newspaper, too—you can read another piece I wrote for The Hawkeye here—and it's the only piece my editor suggested.
"Write something about April in Paris," she said, and this is what came out.
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Now it’s April and thank goodness I don’t have to live through the normal adage “April showers bring May flowers.” J’en ai marre de la pluie; I’ve had it with rain because it’s been raining since November. I want more of the sun, that brilliance of the day you can hear in Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong crooning “April in Paris.”
It’s impossible to be in France in the spring and not think of that song, even if you’re not in Paris.
I think of it almost every time I look out my window of my room here at lycée Jeanne d’Arc.
April in Paris
Chestnuts in blossom
Holiday tables under the tree…
Although I have to confess that I don’t know what a chestnut tree looks like, I’m convinced that I have one just outside my room. Chestnuts in blossom, as the song says. I open my big windows first thing in the morning and lean out to smile at the charm of spring, saying, “Salut, France!”
Because it is only April, the early morning air still catches in my throat, that briskness you know will grow into the fullness of a spring afternoon.
My tree has sweet pink flowers that cluster as a palette: light pink like a girl’s Easter dress, rosiness like a blush, mauve like a glossed-lip grin. The flowers hang on a blue canvas, the colors so delicate and whisper-like that I hold my breath against all this spring explosion.
But April in France is a taunt.
The weather goads you to not carry your umbrella, your constant fashion accessory, but those blue sky days are quickly followed by mean days of rain that you hoped had gone away.
In Normandy, they have a saying: En avril, ne te decouvre pas d’un fil: In April, don’t take off even one thread of clothing.
It may seem like spring, but don’t believe it until June. When I came to school in a skirt and flip-flops, my natural response to sunny days, I was lectured by many French women at lycée Jeanne d’Arc who think they are my French mother and therefore have the right to nag.
The world over knows that you can’t trust spring weather and that you have to enjoy it while you can.
So April in France is an excuse.
Wear a kicky new skirt with a spring pattern of flowers that you bought at full price because you had a weak moment. You walked by the shop window on a sparkling Wednesday afternoon and lost a little self-control in the immense possibilities of spring.
Looking at the sun’s rays highlighting the cathedral spire and listening to the accordion man play “La Vie en Rose” for the tourists, you were grabbed by the feeling that life is—is—isn’t it too much sometimes?
You had an urge that didn’t come from inside you but more from the sun, spire, flowers, cobblestones, sky: skip along the Seine with your arms held wide to hug the spring, a city-tied Maria from The Sound of Music.
But that’s silly, an urge to repress just like the want to scream in a very solemn place.
And so instead—
As I wrote earlier this week, I've been getting a little nostalgic for France, as I normally do in the spring, possibly because of that song "April in Paris."
Or it's possibly because after months of feeling out of place in France {when I lived in Normandy 6 years ago}, spring is when I finally started to feel at home.
So this is a remembrance of things past kind of post {with a nod to Proust, of course}: here is something I wrote about the smell of France when I was living in Normandy.
I wrote this for my hometown newspaper, The Hawk Eye, which was publishing occasional columns from me about my life in France (with a nod to Julia Child there}.
You know you're from a small town when you can get a column in the newspaper just for going somewhere else. {And to this day in Burlington, people will reference me as "that French girl."}
In this column, I wanted my Iowans to be able to breathe in France, just as I was. I also wanted them to take a deep breath of Iowa and appreciate where they were.
{A good note before you read this: I lived in France twice. My junior year, I studied abroad in Aix-en-Provence, so when I talk about my French life before or what my life was like after coming back to America—well, I'm talking about that period in between Aix and moving back to France after college.}
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I’d forgotten the smell of France after going back to America. I forgot a lot of tiny details of my French life when I returned to the Midwest, small everyday nothings that together created days of everything.
I think that I let so much of my French life slip through my mind because back in America, my normal, expected, and loud life pushed away the inconspicuous pieces of France.
I remembered my idealized chunks—mostly based on the vague notion of a better way of life that seems to lengthen every minute of every day until they melt into each other.
In my memory of France, there was little room for realistic details; I painted a large canvas quickly, catching the light and colors like an Impressionist. I smudged over the deceivingly mundane, so my picture of France comes out somewhat like a Renoir.
The faces are animated, full of life and accuracy, but the food and drinks on the table are blurs of color and short strokes. You know there’s a croissant and maybe a cup of café noir, though, in the same way that I knew vaguely that the forgotten details of my French life—the details that had sustained me—had been real and solid.
I felt that there were details, like the exact sound of French sirens and what fromage blanc tastes like with three scoops of sugar in it, but they were only sketched in short strokes as the immenseness of American life marched over them.
But the smell of France...it’s come back to me.
