As the cold of winter and the holidays descends on us all, I've been reminiscent of Spring, when the warmth is just starting to pick it's way through the dense snow and ice, when the flowers are budding; promises of many months of warmth and sunshine to come. I've been thinking about what reminds me of spring the most, and what my fondest memories of it are, and the one thing that has crossed my mind the most are my mother's flowers.
When we were little our mother would take us by the hands, and walk us around the house. It was always during springtime; it was always when the buds started to form and the scents started to take flight with the wind. Our mother is so proud of her house, and of what nature gives it in the eves of spring. There are so many memories I have of her holding our little hands, strolling around the house, just as the sunlight was turning yellow and shining through the breaks of the pine trees creating long strokes of light across the lawn. She would meticulously stop at each and every bush showing us the colors, the flowers, telling us to breathe in the scent. She would show us the hyacinths, always the hyacinths. Purple, yellow, pink, she had the brightest and most colorful hyacinths.
She would show us the magnolia tree and let our hands go so we could run up and sniff the sweetest spring scent. We would stop at the cherry tree in the front, wondering if it was really a cherry tree because those things sure looked liked plums. We always stopped at the daisies next and count how many had popped up that year, and then we walked past the lone maple tree in the middle of the back yard. We would check up on those three pine trees we all planted when we were little to see how they measured up against the massive trees in the thick, green forest behind them that rises up next to our home. We looked at the shrubs with the little yellow flowers but made her walk by those really fast because there were always bees in them.
We would finish on the front stoop, sit down, and watch the ants run in the cracks of the sidewalk. We would sit there, smelling the scents of spring; smelling new beginnings. We would sit, and hear the brook bubbling in the forest and the casual neighborhood car roll by with the driver giving a passive and subtle wave.
Sometimes, if we were lucky, we would hear the faint song of the ice cream truck in a nearby neighborhood and we would sit on the edge of the stoop, straining our ears, panicking when the music stopped and bouncing with glee when it would start back up again. When and if it would finally come we had already made up our minds of what ice cream we wanted and would scream, ICE CREAM TRUUUUUCKKKKKK!!!!, and run inside to grab money from our dad’s change drawer. Our mother would wait patiently and we would come back to her, ice cream and change in hand with thank you’s on the tips of our mouths. We would sit back down, next to those hyacinths and yellow flowers with the bees and the ants and to me, that is Spring. To me, that is the warmth of the season that I can carry with me through the cold winter; hope that spring will come soon enough.
