Spring Awakening
My daughter walked into the kitchen yesterday afternoon and found me leaning on the marble counter wearing a short-sleeved T-shirt. “Did you get in a fight?” she asked, looking at the bright red scratches along both of my arms. “What happened to you?”
I’d spent the afternoon outside doing some spring yard work, weeding beneath our long privet hedge and then covering the bed with Preen, which helps keep the rascally weeds from growing back once the bed is mulched. But the hedge is growing lower in some spots and I really had to push my way in past the low growing branches to shake the plastic jug, sprinkling yellow pellets across the soil. I could feel the sharp branches scraping along my arms as I pushed into the hedge.
I fertilized the anemic-looking hollies at the foot of our driveway I’d planted a few years ago, in hopes they'd perk up a bit, and then moved to the patio to do the same for the row of boxwoods that grow along the side of our small deck. They replaced some sad azaleas that were here when we move in and one fall weekend my teenager begrudgingly pulled them out and then dug holes for the boxwoods, which add a nice pop of color against the deck’s dark brown railings.
As I worked, I thought about how my yard was filled with all the promise that can only come from the middle of spring, as growth and renewal are in full swing. The bright green leaves. All the promise of what could be.
is at it again. This week, creamy flowers joined pointy green leaves, which had burst from the ends of the tree’s thin branches a week earlier, reminding me of upturned fingertips, stretching towards the sky.
That privet hedge, which separates my yard from my neighbors’, is awash in new leaves and was crisply trimmed by my landscapers in the fall so it is still perfectly flat along the top. I can see it from my office chair and admire its straight lines, knowing that soon, junky vines will come from nowhere and start trying to choke their way across the hedge and create a wave of tendrils along the top.
Leaves are coming in on the two hydrangeas that were given to us last summer . We dubbed them “Annie” and “Kerry,” in honor of the girls, and kept them well watered all season as they adjusted to their new surroundings, not unlike the two girls.
Kerry slowly regained her strength as her new kidney dug in and went to work getting her healthy and Annie moved away and started a new life down south. But I still have the hydrangeas to remind me of what we all went through together, and its new leaves remind me of that growth. How we were all changed by the experience.
This weekend I filled the hummingbird feeders and hung them after reading somewhere on the internet that hummers were already starting to migrate back to this part of New Jersey. I didn’t get to hanging the feeders until late last summer but we still saw a couple of hummingbirds zipping through the backyard in August for a sip. Early one morning, I was watering Annie and Kerry and looked up in time to see a bright green flash as the tiny bird flew to a feeder, where it briefly hovered and then was gone.
Maybe I love springtime so much because I embrace beginnings. Give me a project and I am all about it – I will start buying poster board and color-coding with unbridled enthusiasm – until I get distracted and move onto something else. You should see the graveyard of my attempts at knitting or writing a book. I'm learning that it's the hard work, and not the array of pens and markers, that gets the job done.
I also find summer terribly depressing. Sometime around mid-July, I get swallowed by it all. The oppressive heat, crowds at the beach and unending pressure to feel like I’m doing something, make me want to crawl under a rock and pray for November.
In many ways, the kids and I are undergoing our own spring awakening. Annie just got a new puppy and my younger daughter is getting ready to move out of my basement and into a great apartment in Philadelphia. Like, it made me consider chucking the dogwood tree and privet hedge and moving to Philly. My youngest child is heading to college in August and his brother is flying to Nashville with his girlfriend next weekend, just because.
As for me, I think I'm growing, too. My new job is just great and I work with lovely people and am learning just so much. My brain is fuller than it's been in years. I just passed the six-month mark in my sobriety. And I am trying to accept that I am right where I am supposed to be. That there is a plan for me. I just need to stop trying to color code it and do the work of living instead.
I think if you look really close at me -- but for godsakes, not too close -- past the long scratches on my arms, you'd see a bright green layer of tender new leaves. Maybe a few delicate flowers, their creamy petals ruffled by the breeze. From my fingertips, you'd find pointy shoots, delicate leaves lifted in prayer, thankful for the blessings. The chance to grow again.
xoAmy
SUNDAY SHARES: read-watch-cook-buy
In anticipation of tonight's Oscars, I watched the beautiful Minari last night. I think I'm scarred by Promising Young Woman and kept waiting for something horrific to happen, which it did not. There is indeed a tragedy of sorts in Minari, but nothing like the end of the Carey Mulligan movie. Yikes, that ending and I will never hear Britney Spears' Toxic the same way. A podcast I listened to recently that talked about the movie said it was the perfect song to accompany disembowelment. Double yikes.
I was so sick after my second COVID shot this week, which sucked but gave me the opportunity to binge my way through Season One of Younger, which Annie has been telling me to watch for years. Okay, you know how I complained about being a woman of a certain age feeling limited by her advancing age? That's what this show is about, except the former New Jersey housewife is only 40 and has Sutton Foster's good looks and gets to live in Brooklyn. Oh, and her best friend and roomie is Debbie Mazar. Sign me up. It's super fun and I have six more seasons to watch. It's like having an open bag of Cadbury mini eggs sitting in my lap, just waiting for me to chew my way through.
I was giving the NYTimes' Metropolitan section a cursory glance when this article caught my eye and I could not stop reading. I've watched someone I love lose a child and it fucking kills me. How this mom is finding the resilience to move forward, plunging into icy waters, was beautiful and heartbreaking.
My friend, Liz, wrote a book and it's now out in print!! While I haven't gotten to read the YA thriller yet, it's gotten great reviews and her writing, which has appeared in The New York Times and The Washington Post, is always beautiful and full of wit and pathos. I can't wait to read it.
Finally, who needs to write a memoir when I can just dig through my purse and follow this woman's advice?