SPRINGING

The other day I took my mother-in-law for a doctor’s appointment.  In a few months this lady will celebrate her 99^th birthday, although if you met her at the grocery store or the post office you would not guess that she is that old.  I only mention her age to point out how many springs she has welcomed in her life ... and how even after nearly a century’s worth the thrill has not worn off.

Her very words as we left the clinic were “Just smell that air!  Doesn’t it smell good?”  I agreed whole-heartedly; it sure did.  March doesn’t look all that pretty with its dirty snow and muddy yards, but the air hints at warmth, and awakening, and potential.  Soon there will be geese flying overhead, gophers popping up in the ditches, robins looking for nest construction materials: in this symphony of prairie life we are hearing the first soft notes of rebirth.

Google’s morning meme today – the legal First Day of Spring – drilled down into all kinds of technical information on what that means.  Today is also called the Vernal Equinox – vernal for ‘spring’ and ‘equinox’ because today there are ‘equal’ parts of daylight and darkness.  I had known that part, but had not realized that this is true for the whole planet, from the Arctic to the Antarctic and all latitudes in between.  That’s kind of cool.  Today is also when the sun’s center crosses Earth’s celestial equator from south to north due to the wobble of our axis which is the whole reason we get seasons to begin with. 

Okay, enough with the nerd stuff – I promise there will be no quiz on this.  I just thought I would give the scientific explanation of what’s going on.

Much more importantly is how we respond.  Not on the intellectual level, although of course farmers are finalizing their seeding plans and home owners are making sure their sump pumps are set up and ready to roll, but on the spiritual level – where our spirits are lifted by warmth, our mood brightened by the sunshine, our souls rejuvenated with fresh air – the kind that doesn’t hurt our faces.

There are so many things on my ‘to do’ list! 

I can’t wait to hang laundry out on the clothes line to dry!  I love that no fossil fuels are being burned.  I love that I’m saving money as well as the planet.  And I love love love the smell Mother Nature permeates those clothes with.  Win.  Win.  Win.

The dog and I are very excited about going for real walks down a real road, out in the fresh air and sunshine.  The winter is too cold and slippery for that to happen, and right now the muddy roads hold me back, but soon, very soon, this going to happen.

There are already green blades of grass where the sun has warmed up small nooks and crannies of soil.  Nothing repairs the freezer burn on the human psyche like the colour green.  Dandelions will soon follow; they are much easier to tolerate when they are the only flowers out there.

I’m even looking forward to cleaning up the ‘dog residue’ scattered all over the yard.  Whatever was left over from last fall’s hunting season was gifted to the dog.  He and his buddy have spent the winter chewing on these bones, displaying their trophies on the front lawn, and burying their precious treasures.  Between these lawnmower hazards and the usual stinky stuff dogs leave behind, I will have a full day’s job cleaning up.  It’s not a very nice job but an entire day of worthwhile work, as long as it’s outdoors, is something I look forward to.

Best of all, though, is when it’s finally dry enough and warm enough to go out and play in the dirt.  It’s what we all live for.

I guess I think of ‘Spring’ not as a noun, but as a verb.  I have a lot of ‘Springing’ I want to do.  Thank goodness Mother Nature has finally opened that door ....

HOPE AFTER HIBERNATION

I poked my nose outside a while ago.  There was this strange glowing ball in the sky I wanted to take a closer look at.  I only had to step out onto the deck so I decided I could risk doing this little venture in two layers of clothing – unlike the six or seven it would have needed two weeks ago.

Much to my surprise, once I had cleared the shadow of the roof awning, there was this curious sensation.  It was vaguely familiar.  Wherever the light touched my skin, and even through my clothing, I felt ... I think the word is ‘warm’.  I stretched out my arms and lifted my face to the light.  Yes, that definitely felt ... warm.  It had been so long I wasn’t sure it wasn’t a fantasy.

Feeling no need to hurry back inside this time, before hypothermia set in, I took the time to look around.  The place needed some work: dog bones littered the deck, blankets used for a hay ride on Boxing Day were strewn over the wicker chairs, a derelict Christmas tree leaned against the edge of the deck accompanied by a couple shovels.  Obviously it had been too cold to deal with any of this stuff for months.  The barbeque also was out of place – the result of my desire to use it one night last week.  I had dared the extremes for a bbq steak, but I had to pull it out of the wind to get enough heat built up for cooking.

It’s been quite the long haul, this winter has.

This afternoon though, it felt different.  I stood there, mere runners on my feet and a simple bunnyhug for a jacket, and yet I was unworried about losing body parts to frost bite.  How long has it been since I was afforded such luxury, I wondered?

The dog eyed me suspiciously – what was I up to?  Was I going to feed him?  Was I going to give him grief over hauling that deer hide up to the house?  Or, was he weighing the odds of me remembering what it was like to go for an actual down-the-road walk?  He gave his tail a tentative, half-hearted wag and waited for further cues from my body language.  Can’t say he looked all that surprised when I dusted off a cushion and sat down in my favourite deck chair.  Can’t say he looked all that disappointed either.  He was just happy to have one of his humans outside with him.  We spend lots of hours out on this deck together surveying our kingdom – he does it year round, I keep my surveying to the months with no snow.

On a day like today, with the warmth seeping into both body and mind, a tiny flame of hope was ignited.  Or maybe it was inspiration .  Or possibly an awakening of passions and possibilities.  An almost atrophied part of my brain kicked into gear.  What was I going to plant this year?

Which flowers would attract the most hummingbirds?  Was I going for a certain colour scheme this summer?  What would I fill my big new flower bed with?  How had the strawberries weathered the winter?  So glad we bedded everything down with straw last fall!  Had the deer left the apple trees alone?  How long would it be before we could eat fresh asparagus? 

The thoughts, once started, spilled through my brain.

Over in the quonset sits an almost finished hobby greenhouse.  A few nights ago I spent all my insomniac hours virtually towing it around the yard looking for the perfect place for it.  It couldn’t be put down in our flood plain.  It had to be close to both a power and water source and somewhere that was full sun but out of the wind.  I think I have it figured out ... now to get it there! 

Is this how a bear feels when it staggers out of hibernation, I wondered?  Disoriented and unfocussed until the sunshine seeps in and reminds it of who it is and what it wants?

By this time the afternoon sun was leaning into the west.  Almost suppertime.  It occurred to me that the reason most bears wake up is because they’re hungry.  It was time to leave my sunbeam and go take care of job. 

But the weatherman says that tomorrow is going to be a good deck sitting day too ....

MY HAPPY PLACE

There was a woman sitting at the next table to us, eating alone, playing on her phone from time to time, and it occurred to me several times during our three hour lunch, was she listening in on this convoluted, caring, crazy conversation my friend and I were having?  And if so, what was she thinking?  Was she shocked at some of the topics we covered?  Did she identify with some of our life observations?  Did she wish she was seated somewhere else?  And if so, was that farther away, or right at our table so she could join in?

My friend and I try to meet for lunch to ‘catch up’ once or twice a year.  We live over a hundred miles apart and even though we’re both retired we still lead busy lives, it isn’t as easy to get together as one would think.  This date we had on Friday was almost a full year since the last time and we both made a vow not to let it go that long again.  We absolutely do each other a world of good.

Long before we met through our work lives our personal lives had taken very similar paths.  We both married very young and found ourselves as single moms in our early twenties.  We responded to this Life curveball with the same kind of determination born of devastation; we stepped up to the plate and provided for our kids and rebuilt our lives.  We both remarried and had more kids but that kind of impact on our life experience was and is still indelible. 

I have other friends, some with more experience and some with less.  All of them contribute to who I am, but this friend and me?  Well, I guess we are just on the same page.  We understand the same things the same way.  That’s not to say that our conversations are dull - just ask the gal at the next table to us.  We talked and laughed for three straight hours.  The waitress nearly gave up on us; it took us half an hour to remember we needed to order food.   

Imagine!  Women forgetting to order food.

Our range of topics was all over the place.  What were our plans for the week?  The summer?  The year?  How were our families doing?  We touched on health issues, and home life.  There were memories of our work years and the people we knew in common.  We talked of the long term plans one has to make in retirement to make sure that the money lasts as long as we do.  We also spoke of the things that bring us dissatisfaction and grief, and yet after a short pause in the conversation she gestured to the full dining room around us and said “Look at this.  Women need women.”  She was right; the tables were full, and probably 90% of the crowd was female.  To the casual observer the place was a restaurant, but within its walls there were countless therapy taking place.  Coffee and confessions.  Cream soup and condolences.  Sandwiches and spirit lifting.  Lemon pie and laughter.

Time ticked by on us.  About the two and a quarter hour mark, when we both knew we would have to wrap up our visit soon, I was reminded of a presentation we had been a part of during our work days.  It had been aimed at helping us deal with stress and encouraged us all to identify our personal ‘happy place’ so that when the going got tough on any given day we had a place to retreat to, even if only in our imaginations.

I smiled across the table and said “This is my happy place.”  She knew exactly what I meant.

It’s not that it’s my only happy place.  I also love my yard and gardens.  I love the time I spend with my grandchildren and I have some actual blood related sisters whom I cherish dearly.  In fact, my life is full of blessings.

But, as I drove home later that day - my soul up-lifted, my heart light and happy, my consciousness reset to a fresh level of possibilities - that as far as happy places go, there was no doubt that lunch with this friend was a ten out of ten.

PERPETUAL WINTER

We woke this morning to another breath-taking display of hoar frost.  It made me wonder if this was Mother Nature’s way of apologising; a token of appreciation for hanging in there while she tries to fix her furnace.  While I welcome her gesture, and the frost is spectacular against the bright blue sky, I am none-the-less very done with 35 below zero.

As I sipped my first mug of the piping hot, caffeine-laced nectar of the gods that keeps me on an even keel these days I opened the weather app on my phone, steeling my fragile mental state for the inevitable ... sure enough ... no hope for warmer temperatures for as far as the Weather Network is willing to gamble on predictions.  At least two more weeks, but I already knew that.  Other sources have gone out on a limb and forecast this deep freeze to continue well past the middle of March.  I don’t want to believe such things but I think my cup-is-half-full disposition is broken.

I just want to go outside and not have to worry about body parts freezing and falling off.  I want to take the garbage out without having to dress like I’m making for the South Pole.  I want to wash my car without worrying about the doors freezing shut. 

I dream of wandering around my gardens, searching for the first shoots of green to appear.  I long for the warmth of the sun on my shoulders.  I can’t wait to smell the heavenly scent of fresh-turned soil. 

Lord help me, but I’m actually having a hard time to accept that in 2019 March will not be the ‘month of mud’.  I should be celebrating the possibility of a shortened version of the spring melt, but if that means hideous sub-zero temperatures until after St. Patrick’s day I think that’s a price too high to pay.  The old adage “be careful what you wish for” comes to mind.

I’m not the only one disgusted with this perpetual winter; the dog is not amused either.

Well, I guess I should clarify that – he’s not so much disgruntled with the winter, it’s more me he has an issue with.  The winter me.  The me that won’t go outside with him.

The spring, summer and fall me is much more to his liking.  That me goes for walks, or works out in the garden, or at the very least sits out on the deck and keeps him company while he surveys his kingdom. 

The winter me is useless.  I hear his judgement and disdain every time I step up on to my elliptical for a half hour’s worth of fake walking.  He has this groan/moan/disgust noise that comes through loud and clear.  Heck, even if I were deaf I would know from his body language what he thinks of the silliness of walking without going anywhere.  I’ve explained to him several times the advantages he has that I don’t: the husky made-for-the-Arctic fur coat, the fact that he has four feet to keep him stable on icy surfaces whereas I have only two, and that even if he should fall he has a much shorter elevation to fall from.  At the moment I’m older, but he’s catching up fast - you know how that ‘in dog years’ math goes.   He does not worry about broken hips like I do now but there may come a time ...

But there I go, thinking about the future again.  Like there’s going to be one.

Meanwhile ... back at the ranch ... winter goes on.  And on.  And on. 

In a normal year we would be in the middle of a February thaw; the curling surfaces in natural ice rinks would be down to mush by now.  In a normal year there would have been enough sun to leave the rural gravel roads full of ruts.  In a normal year I would need more than two hands to count how many times I’ve been outside since New Years.

I’m even beginning to get a little nostalgic about mosquitoes.

IN MY FEVERED BRAIN

This all started because my sister’s fridge is an odd size.

Back when they built their house they planned their new kitchen around the appliances they already owned ... including this unique sized fridge.  The resulting kitchen is a pretty and efficient work space and has served them well for 30 years.  The fridge has served them even longer and lately it’s been talking retirement in growly, thumpy language that they understand all too well.  The problem is though, its demise is much more complicated than buying a replacement; it means remodeling the whole kitchen to fit a new one in.

This is not the end of the world because after 30 years other things are a bit outdated as well.  They have been exploring options all winter and are getting kind of excited about the project.  My problem is that that kind of excitement is infectious.  I have been infected with the remodelling bug.  There’s no other excuse - my fridge is regular sized and is working fine, but the kitchen it sits in is even older than 30 years and has definitely seen better days.

You have to understand, this is the dead of winter and there is literally nothing else to do.  It’s too early to start plants – I did that last year and they all got so weak and spindly they fell over and died.  I lobbied for a sunshine holiday but was ignored – he’s been playing out in his shop so he’s busy and happy. 

If I bake we just get fat. 

I could go into some kind of house cleaning frenzy ... but let’s be serious here, why would I start that kind of nonsense in my sixties? 

The dog does his part by shedding enough hair to keep me vacuuming at least once a day, but other than that, I’m bored.  I’m sure you’ve heard it said “an idle mind is the devil’s playground”.

So, as of this week I have entered into stage two of this fever.  Stage one was just listening to my sister’s plans.  I understood their desire to be proactive with their planning and not wait until the fridge forced their hand.  Stage two hit when she showed me the computer generated images of what her new kitchen was going to look like.  I was intrigued ... what could mine look like?

If I hadn’t had a dentist appointment the very next day I might have been saved, but that took me to the town where the kitchen planning place was.  I tried to tune out the voices telling me to “Go and see!” but they won and I went home with  all kinds of pamphlets and the promise to be in touch for a home visit the next week.  I just made that date this morning for next Tuesday, and in the meanwhile I’ve toured the company’s showroom in the city with my sister with the dying fridge.  My fevered mind has examined payment options and speculated about budget restrictions.  It is possible that price shock therapy may cure me, but it better happen soon; I’m fading fast.

There are so many things to consider, though. 

Of course, there are the obvious ... colors, styles, storage options, appliance placements, lighting, extras ... you know, the nuts and bolts of the operation, but my mind doesn’t stop there.

Oh no, I have to get into the existential reasoning that always haunts me.  Should I, or shouldn’t I?  Should I be sinking that much money into a farmhouse that may or may not be used again once we retire?  How many years of our use would make it worth it?  Is this the best use of the money I have?  There are people who need kitchens much worse that I do, do I really deserve to improve mine?  I worked hard for that money – it’s mine to spend ... and it’s good for the economy to keep that money moving. 

“Eat your broccoli, there are kids starving in Africa!” 

AAAARRRRGGGHHH!!!!

All of this because my sister’s fridge is an odd size.  I’ll keep you posted.

                                                  ME AND MATH

It’s tax time again.  The gal from our accountant’s office just called to confirm our date … so romantic – Valentine’s Day.  If I play my cards just right, and everything adds up, we may celebrate by going out for lunch.  I mean, we’ll already be in town and everything.

But that’s the least of my worries at the moment.  First I have to ‘do the books’.  I haven’t touched them since this time last year when I swore a solemn oath to never let the job slide for a whole year ever again.  I suck at solemn oaths.

I’ll tell you what else I suck at.  Anything to do with numbers.  Give me letters and I will write you a story, or a letter, or even a book.  But give me numbers and the result is anxiety and self doubt and rumpled paper made grungy by sweaty palms.

Personally I blame Miss Seagle, my first grade teacher.  Or maybe it was more of a wide spread, institutional thing.  Maybe all Grade one teachers distributed mammoth sheets of addition questions, and held up their evil stop watches, commanding all the tender innocents in their charge to do a week’s work in two minutes, or less. 

In our classroom everyone else would snap to work.  I would freeze in my tracks.  Numbers were hard enough, but numbers under pressure?  I would stare in awe of my friends’ ability to scribble down answers on their papers while I sat there unsure of which hand I was supposed to hold my pencil in.  I remember Judy Dangstorp crying because she didn’t get 100%.  Her bar was obviously much much higher than mine – my goal was to be at least halfway down the page before Miss Seagle told us to put our pencils down.  Getting the right answers was a whole other ordeal.

Given enough time, though, my arithmetic education did progress.  Grades 1 and 2 kept up the repetition and slowly built up my confidence.  “I can do this!” I would tell myself.  If it didn’t get any harder I was going to be fine.  Then came Grade 3.  After one week of addition and subtraction review Mrs. Leiter sat us all down and told us of the magic of multiplication and division.  She seemed quite excited about it, bless her soul.  I felt deceived.  After all my hard work had paid off and I had mastered ‘plusses and minuses’  I was being ‘rewarded’ with something even harder.

They did it to me again in Grade 6 with geometry and in Grade 7 with algebra.  Who knew that was even a word?  “Al – ge – bra” with all its problems and equations and sneaking in letters that masqueraded as part of the solutions we were supposed to find. 

And as if that wasn’t bad enough, Grade 10 threw two more classes at me  – chemistry and physics.  Both used the same alien language.  When would it ever end?

Apparently not in Grade 11 when Mr. Johnson introduced us to trigonometry with its sines and cosines and tangents – the results of an unholy marriage between algebra and geometry.

The day I heard the words ‘quantum physics’ blowing in the wind I decided marriage and child rearing was the easy way out.

And look at me go!  Decades later I find myself still doing arithmetic under the gun.  A whole year’s worth, and eight days to do it.  It’s like I can still hear Miss Seagle’s stop watch … tick tock tick tock.

DEFLATED

Well, it’s all over … and it never even really got started.

We sit here in our sad pool of disappointment, our expectations unmet, our excitement dissolving into a bland mush of just another winter day.  They promised us a storm and all we got was 17 snowflakes.

That’s right - 17.  I counted.

For Prairie People it’s hard to explain how we feel about our weather to those whose climates are more mundane.  Our very genetics make us vulnerable to wild weather intoxication.  This is a land of climate extremes populated by fanatical people.  We do 40 degrees above zero in the summer and 40 below in the winter.  We have the best thunderstorms on the planet.  We can go from drought to deluge in under 24 hours.  Everything we build eventually leans to the east due to almost constant prevailing winds out of the northwest.  We absolutely view adverse weather as a challenge, not a curse.  There’s nothing like seeing tornado hunters in our area to quicken our blood in the summer, and the word ‘blizzard’ perks us all up out of our winter doldrums. 

We are weather watchers, all of us.  Not in the TV sense though.  To tune into The Weather Channel is an exercise in frustration for Prairie People.  The place on their big map featuring the prairie provinces is where the weather guy or gal stands to point to the east and west ends of the country, like we don’t even exist.  It’s rude, really, and damaging to our egos.

And anyway, we prefer to watch our weather in person, with the wind sand blasting our faces, the wind chill solidifying our body parts, the sun baking any unprotected skin it can find.  Since the advent of cell phones has put a permanent camera in everyone’s pocket, I dare you to find a prairie phone without weather/sky pictures in their albums.  They don’t have “Land of the Living Skies” on our license plates for nothing.

Cell phones also serve another role in our weather fascination – through weather warning apps we are apprised of all the details we can’t be bothered watching TV for.  I think I’m as tuned into the particular sound a weather warning makes on my phone as any personal text … three little notes that go up in scale kind of like when a question is posed.  It makes it sound like “What is coming next?”  So very fitting.

And, for the past few days those notes began coming fast and furious.  After months of languishing with nothing exciting weather-wise, we were finally in for a blow.  Although the experts were refusing to use the word ‘blizzard’ because there are certain criteria to be met (wind, snow, temperatures, and duration) they still promised enough pizzazz to make us sit up and take notice.

It’s our self reliance that makes us happy to see trouble on the horizon.  After all, how can we prove we can take care of ourselves in hostile conditions if we are not confronted with hostile conditions? 

Folks with wood burning stoves made sure their wood supply was topped up.  Generators were made ready.  Groceries were bought.  Snow blowers were tuned up.  Books and puzzles were on hand.  The supply of popcorn and hot chocolate were double checked.

The excitement built for the better part of the week, almost like a balloon was filling with the air of anticipation we were all feeling.  By Friday night the balloon was stretched tight, almost bursting with our bring-it-on energy, and flying high; its surface taut and shiny like the gleam in our eyes. 

But while we were all so busy preparing we hadn’t noticed that the warnings had become fewer and farther between.  By bedtime Saturday night our weather balloon had begun to droop.

Sunday morning saw all 17 snowflakes fall between 7:30 and 9:15 with enough wind that they didn’t fall straight to the ground.

Later, as I was vacuuming I found a balloon the grandkids had left here a few weeks ago.  It was tucked away under a chair; that dusky, wrinkly color balloons fade to when they die a slow death

And I thought to myself:“I know how you feel, buddy.  I know how you feel.”