Always a surprise

Every year, spring arrives.  And every year, I am a little surprised.  

Intellectually, of course, I understand that spring will follow winter (though in 2011, for the first time, I began to doubt it, as winter persisted mercilessly).  I like the changing of the seasons here in the Midwest and have grown used to this cycle since moving to the northern United States.  I understand now why people talk about the weather.  In India and Kuwait, seasons changed, but except for the occasional monsoon flooding or red-tinted sandstorm, there wasn’t much to talk about.  In central Illinois, in contrast, change is the one constant.

So, why does spring surprise me?  I think it’s the boldness of the season, the audaciousness with which brilliant yellow daffodils and rich purple crocus pop up out of last year’s mulch, the glee with which the daffodils bob their heads in the central Illinois breeze.  Nature uses bright colors, colors that complement each other, almost as though to get our attention, to demand that we notice the earth is changing, that it is waking up and greeting the spring sunshine and the lengthening days. 

As a sixth grader in India, I memorized Wordsworth’s poem about daffodils—long before I had ever seen a daffodil in person.   I loved the image of flowers “Fluttering and dancing in the breeze” on the shores of a lake.  Years later, as a grad student at Penn State, I thought of the line “Continuous as the stars that shine/and twinkle on the Milky Way” after spending a late night lying in a field with friends, watching the Perseid meteor showers.  I had just come out as a lesbian and felt very alive.  My friends and I had not planned on our outing to the fields, so we were cold in our summer clothes, and the four of us were sharing one thermos of hot coffee.  We were all graduate students in English, so we tried to think of poems about stars as we watched the meteors; Wordsworth’s line came to me only after I was back in the warmth of my studio apartment.

I thought of Wordsworth again as I walked among the daffodils in Canterbury, on the grounds of St. Martin’s Church, the oldest church in England, established in 597 AD.   The church was just up the street from where I lived for the semester in 2009, and I often walked in the cemetery surrounding the building, admiring a spectacular view of the cathedral.  That morning, I was listening to music when a particularly catchy song came on, and I found myself dancing and singing among the daffodils and gravestones, and then ducking behind a bush and quieting down as some workers came to tend the grounds.  That spring in England, seeing yellow flowers adorn open, grassy spaces, I understood why daffodils moved Wordsworth to write poetry. 

Now another winter has come to an end, and daffodils offer themselves as gifts to our eyes, while their dancing forms inspire our bodies, inviting us to dance in the sunshine.