Every year around this time I take a walk to Flint Street on the Neck. There’s a spot there by an old stone wall where purple crocuses come up, and I look for my first annual sign of spring. None was in sight when I checked in February, but by last week they had emerged.
My Merlin bird identification app indicated a yellow goldfinch was in or near my yard on a recent morning. They don’t all migrate, but I haven’t seen any since the fall, so I’m calling their return another welcome sign of spring, along with exhibition baseball on TV and the reopening of Sullivan’s at Castle Island. I’ve never gone to the famed hot dog stand for opening day, but reading about it in the paper is a reassuring sign that the calendar’s rhythms continue to move on undeterred.
I’ve read and shared the concern about some signs of spring arriving too early, more evidence of our warming planet. Yet I appreciate the advice of author Margaret Renkl, who has quickly become my personal Yoda, who writes, “The world is burning, and there is no time to put down the water buckets.” Yet, “for an hour put down the water buckets anyway.”
Isn’t that irresponsible? Mustn’t we always be head down, worried and working to fix all that is wrong and unjust around us? If we aren’t resisting and raging, toiling and trying, aren’t we accepting the unacceptable? To the contrary, Renkl suggests, “Take your cue from the bluebirds, who have no faith in the future, but build the future nevertheless, leaf by leaf and straw by straw, shaping them into the roundness of the world.”
I’ve referenced her a lot of late in these columns. I think that is partly because her book, “The Comfort of Crows,” is written to be read in small chunks, structured as a week-by-week call of attention to the beauty around us. And I read it typically over the weekend as I am thinking about what I am going to write in the coming week. Writing under the umbrella of “Everything will be okay” when things seem very much not okay at all is sometimes challenging. Yet, Renkl’s faith in the future and belief that “we are creatures built for joy” resonate.
What are some of the signs of spring that bring you joy? It’s worth taking a moment to list them. Tulips and pussy willows. Red buds on a maple tree. A teasingly warm sunny morning.
Another sign of mine is quite distinct from these natural ones. And I don’t mean Cadbury Mini Eggs, though they are pure joy in a candy crust. I mean those little toy yellow chicks that clatter around when you wind them up. I first saw them at Crosby’s last spring when an impish clerk was delighting customers by racing them along the floor.
I promptly bought two and challenged my family to race them at the Easter dinner table. They thought I was ridiculous. So, this year, I have bought two more and if need be, I’ll entertain myself by pitting teams of chicks against each other in a race over the edge of my coffee table. I guess you have to be farther removed from childhood for such antics to be seen as joyful not just silly.
Last March, I also sought signs of a more mystical kind. I had just finished a book called “Signs, the Secret Language of the Universe” by Laura Lynne Jackson. In it, she argues that, if you ask, loved ones who have passed will send you a sign from the other side. So, I gave it a try and asked my mother to send me signs of Ferris wheels to recall a particularly fond experience we once shared together. My mother was a stubborn one, and rather than what I asked for, that March I saw signs of Christmas everywhere, her favorite holiday.
Were those signs from her? Who knows? I like to think so. This March I’m asking for Ferris wheels again. I can be stubborn, too.
I’ll be literally putting the water buckets down and taking a couple week break from this column. When I return, spring will have officially arrived and its signs will be all around us. Or there will be a foot of snow on the ground. Either way, I have faith in the future. Everything will be okay.
Virginia Buckingham, a member of The Marblehead Current’s Board of Directors, is the former chief executive officer of the Massachusetts Port Authority, chief of staff to two Massachusetts governors, deputy editorial page editor for the Boston Herald and author of “On My Watch: A Memoir.”
