spring stirrings

A dogwood tree can break your heart. 

It's been cold and rainy, and I've been sick. I keep passing the abundant deep pink and cream colored blooms in my neighborhood and thinking: wait. Hold off. Don't change yet. I'm not ready! I haven't basked in the spring sunshine and gazed up into your elegant branches! I haven't stretched out on my back under the cherry tree on our old front lawn reading a book all afternoon, I haven't sat on Parrish Beach at Swarthmore on a perfect May day, struck dumb and warm and lazy by the sunshine, unable to get up and write a final paper. I haven't taken a blanket into the backyard to sit with one of my babies and wonder about what to do with the garden this year.

When the weather changes, all the springtimes past loosen from their moorings.  It is not always a comfortable sensation.

But getting back to the dogwoods. 

Dogwood flowers are delicate, yet muscular. Simple, yet very fine. They are like a cluster of ballet dancers, clad in those marvelous tutus that jut out in a horizontal line across the body, perpendicular to the legs and torso. The tutus defy gravity with vibrant buoyancy, bouncing with each new knock of toe shoe against the floor, just as the dogwood petals nod and wave gently in a stirring breeze.

If the spring I long for, that I am looking around for with a bit of urgency in my gaze (for everywhere it falls I find change, and time passing, and signs of summer coming), is represented by the cool, inviting precision and articulation of the dancers from a scene in Swan Lake - well then, the summer is a crush of commuters barreling down the subway station stairs to make the next train. It's a jumble, a self-interested crowd, a mass of life that stops for nothing. These people burst from the wings in their boots and heels and could care less about a tutu's delicate bounce as they charge across the stage. 

It's the riot of green leaves and bugs and heat and thunderstorms that will be here before you know it. 

 

And when it comes, we will leave Lancaster and eventually resettle in our house in Annapolis. A good thing, right? I should probably put my head down and join that flow of commuters walking at a brisk pace, focused on their goal. I should get on a train, look at my phone, and look up and step off only when it has arrived at my station and I can begin to try on those old ways again. 

But damn if I can't seem to stop noticing all the time. Noticing the ease I feel on these streets, the harmonious architecture, the frequency with which I meet spontaneously with friends, the delight the children take in walking places by themselves, the gratifying flow of sharing everyday life with my mother, the bounty of the market, the pleasure I took in my job (over as of last week), the culture of kindness and courtesy at my children's school. The neighbor's cat, Boots, curled up on Frances's hoodie on the front porch, napping in the sunshine. 

The heartache of this beautiful rainy spring is all about being-towards-departure.  

Kind of like life, I guess. But a ramped up version, because I'm all transition-y.

When I told one of my student-clients with whom I had worked well for a number of weeks that I wouldn't be returning next fall, he looked at me and smiled. He let his head drop sideways; it fell heavily into his right hand that had been resting on the chair's armrest. "Everyone leaves, Meagan," he said. "Everyone leaves."

It was a terribly sad moment. In his short life thus far, that had been consistently true. I would be one more person who left. The difference was that he could tell me about it, and we could share the sadness in the room together with comfort and trust. And so I found that moment to also be very beautiful.

So inspired by his courage, I'll share this with you: I'm sad to go. I'm scared to keep living our new reality, in which cancer is almost like a sixth family member, back in Annapolis. I'm scared to leave the place where we all learned how to live with this, supported by grace and love and the feeling I have of being at home.

I think the dogwoods, at this very moment, tinged with hints of brown and a bit crowded by new leaves, are an example of wabi sabi. Maybe. I don't totally get it, but I like the idea that in their current state of flux and imperfection they are perhaps at their most beautiful. That would suggest that I need not panic because they are changing too fast and surely I will miss the best part; rather they are exactly as they should be, just at the moment I am fortunate enough to behold them.

p.s. One of the things Beatrice I have been doing on rainy cold spring sick days is watching Russian ballets on Youtube. Who would have thought? She is captivated by this Odette. I am too.