Signs of Spring
You are not likely to ever find a person, even less so a woman, whose life is made up of happy occasions (perhaps because we have a differently character). What happiness does come our way is short- lived or before long turns into its exact opposite. There is, however, one source of joy and beauty, which is always present and meant for everyone. I mean nature. Is the return of spring not a happy occasion for all of us? Or the confidence that spring will return, come what may? And how much easier spring’s lighter clothes are for us and that we can walk without watching every step lest we slip and fall or freeze. We can keep our windows open, the sun filling our room and swallows racing in the sky.
Some people like early spring which is still mixed with winter. It is when you stand away from the wind and the sun is warm on your face, almost summer-hot, almost like in the Crimea. But one step in the wrong direction and you are back in January. When one side of the snow drift is hard and cold and the other is melting and steaming, showing the first fragile blades of green grass. Icicles hanging from the edge of the roof are let off big drops echoed by titmice, dirty puddles on the sidewalk are blue reflecting the sky. Spring is coming!
For me, one of the sure signs of spring coming is the return of a crow I have known for a long time. The large bird has a strange habit — at least I think it so — of perching at the very top of a birch tree I can see from my window. It balances on a tiny twig, swinging even when there is not the slightest breeze. Wind or not makes no difference to the bird. It is in its favorite place and is quite comfortable there. It is there in all kinds of weather, even when the rain pours or wind howls. Then it swings wildly with the twig, disappearing from view and reappearing. In winter the crow flies away, I have no idea where. That day, on March 1, the bird appeared right on time, perching on the same twig. Of course, I cannot be absolutely sure that it is the same crow. Yet those who think it a different crow cannot prove it either.
City streets, currently displaying the entire collection of garbage accumulated in wintertime, now offer scenes you could never espy in the previous season. I was standing at a streetcar stop, waiting my turn to get on, when I noticed a handsome young man jump out, then pause by the door. He must have noticed with the corner of his eye an elderly woman about to disembark. He turned to her, bowed in a manner strange in these parts and with a courtly gesture and smile helped her out. The woman was, of course, stunned (who would not be?) and then her furrowed face and bent figure underwent a remarkable transformation. In an instant she was a middle-aged lady worthy of the young gentleman’s attention. I still wonder if the young man was a foreigner. But if so, would he be using a trolley? Perhaps it was just one more of the miracles worked by spring and meant to warm the soul looking on and still cold from the past winter.
In spring, some people experience the awakening of age-old habits and desires rooted perhaps in the tribal nomad lifestyle. Not all can resist that call of the ancestral wild. Ukrainian philosopher Hryhory Skovoroda is known to have started packing every time the snow melted away and the first grass appeared. He would quickly finish whatever he had been doing during the winter and leave whatever comfortable abode he had at whatever estate. He would make a small bundle of necessary belongings, including ink, pen, and paper, and several books, and set off on yet another wandering across Ukraine, walking from one village and landlord estate to the next, listening to the blind minstrels, composing songs, rejoicing at sudden ideas coming to his mind. He would bask in the luxury of spring come to his native land and sing for all the steppe to hear: “Darling spring, you’re here! Bitter winter, you’re gone!” I suspect that God created man and let him multiply not for us simple mortals to sit in our high-rise caves and that every time He sends us spring it is to remind us of His other plans.
