After this variety of winter, you’d think I’d welcome the spring. With it comes the sun and the wind, and some warmth that disguises itself as cold when the wind whips it so. The snow is melting, giving way to that sun and to the whipped warmth, and the grass it showing itself to be trampled, scraped, molested by so much winter but still there, waiting to be watered and sunned and greened. The ice that covered this great lake for so many days and months is rotting, dying slowly from the inside out, softening and weakening and turning brittle. If we are dust to dust then the ice is so obviously water to water.
These days, I find myself driving, watching the scenery with my usual intensity, but finding that my goals now have changed. I am no longer looking at the big picture of spring that will find its way to summer, instead I’m focused on the small tasks that must be completed to make way for that summer day. First, we must rid ourselves of this snow, and what a fine job that wind and sun and moderate air has done. We have made solid progress, but we need to continue the work because it is far from over. There are piles of snow, fields of snow, and snow hiding under treed groves that finds its strength in that filtered shade. There is snow melting, but there is much left, and so I plan and scheme every day as to what might be the best scenario to melt it all.
We need rain, but not so much that we flood our basements and overwhelm our storm sewers. We need sun and warmth, but not so much in a heavy dose that we melt things too quickly, on account of our wish to not flood ourselves out in our haste for summer. We need warm days and warm nights, we need sun and wind, because the sun melts and the wind dries, and I have a gravel driveway that you’d be forgiven for mistaking for a mud driveway. We need the ice to continue its decay, but we need at least one rumbling thunderstorm to help shake the foundations of that thick shroud. This is the theory of one pier man in the area, and as with any theory that provides me a path towards my goal, I’m willing to accept it.
But with this sun and this sort-of-warmth, I feel better on a day like today. All that spring watching and waiting and all that sun and wind can be tiring, and I find the fog this morning to be a welcome cover that I can hide under. The work being done outside is not pretty work. It is not bright work. It is not the finish work that tells the story and expects congratulations. The work now is the dirty work, it is the sausage being made, it is the snow melting and revealing garbage that we never knew was there, or maybe we knew but all that white snow forced us to forget. Either way, today is a day when the dirty work is hidden from view, and the fog today is as welcome as the sun was yesterday. In my rush to see the last traces of winter melted from view, this fog is calming.
Yesterday, I looked at pictures from May 13th of last year. That’s my birthday, and as it is my birthday there were no pictures of me, and many of my children and of the lake and my parents’ front lawn. It must have been Mother’s Day as well, which is a normal problem that I face every year on my birthday. It is the equivalent to a child having a birthday on December 23rd, as we both get swept under the rug of a bigger event. The pictures were of a bright green lawn, shaggy even. The lake was blue, and my dad’s pier was in. My fishing boat was tethered to it, and the children were caught in mid-run, or mid-laugh, or mid-fight. The scene was bright, colorful, and alive. That scene is mere weeks away, though today it is nearly impossible to see through this fog.