By: Jennifer Richardson Holt
I bet with the title of this post you think I am going to talk about what is going on in the world right now. You’re correct. I’m going to talk about Springtime.
Oh Spring. You’re such a fickle mistress. You seduce us with your gorgeous blossoms. We are wooed with intoxicatingly fragranced jasmine draping from the most unassuming of places. It had been some random overgrown vine only weeks earlier and now it is a luxurious, yellow raiment worn by trees, fence posts and any other locality that has held still long enough. You give us giant walls of wisteria to ooh and ahh over. The most modest plot of greenery is now speckled with a veritable paint box of the whites of dogwood, the purples of redbud and the vibrant yellow-green softness of new baby leaves. We revel in your warmth that has yet to be tainted by the dreaded humidity. We cannot get enough of a good cool breeze and a golden sun that doesn’t yet feel like it wishes us all to be seared to withering heaps of formerly human charcoal. The springtime sun is a luxury for us. We haven’t achieved the full swelter yet. It reminds us of our other pleasantness we like to call Autumn that lasts for a few moments usually sometime in November when we aren’t having heat strokes as we are for the bulk of our seasons. This azure sky gets us all drunk this time of year. We want to be immersed in all the natural gloriousness.
Then you remind us why this whole season is a veritable love-hate relationship. Oh, did you want to go outside and have anything at all on the whole wide planet NOT be covered in a yellow noxious dust? I’m sorry, spring just cannot accommodate you. Did you want to be able take a sniff of the lovely perfumes of the abundant blooms and not have your sinus cavity be attacked as if it were being placed in a pressurized cheese grater? No, I’m afraid this too is not something that our dear friend/fiend springtime can help you out with.
You see, for some reason all this loveliness can’t seem to reproduce in some unobtrusive manner like other species, nay, nay. Why can’t we just have a nice casual seed drop like, say, the dandelion for instance. Sure, they’re a weed. Sure, it’s not the ideal addition to your manicured lawn but at least it has the decency to let it’s seed meander one at a time and land one a time. At least they don’t just spew all their reproductive powders everywhere attacking most of your orifices with all sorts of violence causing most of your orifices to leak in unpleasant forms. Yes, I am looking at you, you foul, FOUL pine trees. (I know they’re good for building and paper and whatnot but I am sorry I just don’t like them.) But let’s not forget the joy of knowing that all this golden coating that will cover all of the outdoors, (and the indoors if you have the gall to think you can open a window and enjoy a nice day) cannot be washed off. Well, I tell a lie, it can be washed off and whatever it is you’ve washed will be beautifully pristine…for all of 3 to 4 minutes until the yellow cloud of doom has it’s way and reclaims whatever you took from its grasp.
For all it’s snotty, dusty woes though, those opening buds and sprouting leaves do tell their tale. It’s typical life I suppose. There are always those less than thrilling bits, but there it is, shining out through the midst of the ick, there’s hope. The dreary grey of winter is giving birth to every color in the pallet. Spring is that reminder that if you can dig deeply enough through the pollen then there is beauty that will boggle the mind. Sure, you might have to grab a tissue or two to take a really good look, but it’s there. Everything is starting anew again, and we get to revel in the dawn after the dark. The dawn that always comes no matter how dark the night.
It’s ok if you shed a tear or two for all the hope that the season brings. It’s a beautiful thing, the hope of new beginnings so really, a tear of the possibilities of all that is to come is perfectly reasonable. And everyone will think it’s just allergies.
Prose and Possibilities 