An Ode To Spring’s Shift

Up and over the bridge not once, not twice, but three separate times last week. I let the swing of the train soothe me. I let the copious amount of masks encourage me. I let the headlines of bad news on desolate trains and unwell people, evaporate from me. “I’m a city girl. Generations of my family are city families. We ride trains.” I said as a sort of mantra to ease my foot back into the pool of the underground. During the summer, I found no issue; it was exciting, exhilarating, empty! This winter things and people changed. And more than I would readily admit, my body sheltered in itself. 

But getting the vaccine has sort of wedged my hand in another world. I am not quite ready for the new normal. But I find myself in the womb of this city, much like a newborn myself, flickering my eyelids open day by day. Just waiting for the right minute to be fully immersed and awake; getting into things, drinking the milk of this wonderful and wild unfound place.

Last week, I purchased Daffodils at the market, to be laid in terracotta pots I have laying around for warmer days and hands. Over my sink, my fingernails were shoved in the earth, and the pots crawled with winter’s insects. I filled the pots, I tossed the soil and sprayed water ever-so lightly from my sink to finish them off. 

In the wee hours of the morning, the clocks shifted and I noticed I had been (rather unconsciously) shifting along with them. Possibly, like so many of you. 

Later that day, while utterly tired and mixing the hours with meals and blooming children, I thought about the task of planting the Daffodils and placing them on my stoop. The Daffodil is said to mean rebirth and new beginnings, a baby born every eight seconds or so.

Perhaps, it is a stretch of my love and need, but I went to the bodega and purchased a few for River, Oak, and me too. Beside our beds, tucked in cool water and ornate glass vases, are reminders of birth, life and the delicate season we are exiting and the one that stands before. 

I’m not sure about any of it, truly. But I know to honor those that are not entering this season with us, and the version of all of us that we have tucked under the soil, knowing that it will always, somehow, be there, there’s no better way than to plant Daffodils, as we do. Spring forward.