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New England
spring
The last few
weeks have been absolutely lovely for November. The problem is
that it’s May and we’re still clinging to our sweaters and
turning up the heat. Someone at the gym was bemoaning this lack
of warmth wailing, “You’ll see, it will keep on being cold until
suddenly it’s 100 degrees. If this keeps up we won’t even have a
spring!”
But we are
having a spring — a New England spring. Somehow every year we
suffer a kind of collective amnesia, believing that we should be
playing at the beach by now, and so we ignore all the New
England signs that winter has definitely gone for the year.
When I leave
work each day it’s still light out even at 8 p.m. At 4:30 in the
morning, the bird chorale strikes up, faithfully announcing the
sun’s arrival. The forsythia has already turned green and the
lilacs have arrived. Lawns are rid of old leaves and kids are
wearing shorts and flip-flops. The Red Sox are playing and
tables are out on Newbury Street. It’s definitely spring.
Last week
Steve was sitting on our back porch when he gestured for me to
come over. He pointed to the corner of the porch near the drain
pipe where the robins had abandoned their nest last year.
“The robins
are back,” he whispered.
When we had
the house painted last summer we asked the painters not to
disturb the nest. People had told us that robins return to their
old haunts, so I kept watch all that summer waiting for them to
come back, but they never did. But now, unexpected and unlooked
for, they were there. I tiptoed to the corner, but the mother
gave me a nervous look so I retreated. Then I remembered that
Snoopy had been barking up at what I thought was the air the day
before.
“No more
barking at the birds!” I admonished him. “You’re frightening
them.”
I hope this
time I’ll see the babies leave. I keep telling myself that if I
can actually see them fly away I won’t feel as bereft as I did
last year, when suddenly, after weeks of cheerful chirping, I
was left with nothing but bare twigs. I tell myself such fairy
tales!
Babies are
everywhere. Driving to work I saw a pair of geese surrounding a
group of small, chirping, fuzzballs. I quickly pulled over to
see them, but the mother honked furiously at me. She tossed one
last epithet my way before hurriedly herding her brood away. I
search for them every day, but I guess she decided the spot
wasn’t safe anymore.
I’ve also
seen the heron flying through the trees. He must have returned
to the pond in the woods behind my house. I hope he spends the
summer with us so that I can watch him when I walk Snoopy. I’ll
just have to prevent Snoopy from barking at him. Snoops can be
infuriating. Especially when he decides to follow his nose as he
did the other night.
You can tell
it’s spring when Snoopy gets antsy. All winter long he’s content
to lazily sleep in the sun, but the moment there’s a bit of
warmth in the air, he needs to be out on the hunt. He prowls the
house restlessly all morning. He settles on the couch, then off
and onto the porch. He returns inside to a chair only to rouse
himself after a few minutes to explore the porch again. Scents
must be magnified 1,000 times in the spring breezes because once
he finally gets out, his head barely comes up for air. He sniffs
every blade of grass, every piece of sod, every tree, like a
wine connoisseur.
Every night
before we go to sleep we let him out for a final run. We don’t
put his leash on because he’s usually half asleep and amazingly
too tired to sniff. But we forgot it was spring. I heard Steve
take him out and then didn’t hear them return for quite a while.
I knew that meant trouble.
Suddenly
Steve came running up the stairs for a flashlight, telling me
that the dog had run into the woods and he couldn’t find him. My
stomach flew into my heart as I ran to get another flashlight to
help search.
“How am I
going to tell the girls that we lost the dog?!” I thought
wildly.
Would he
ever find his way home? Would we be posting those sad little
notices on telephone poles knowing we’d never see him again? How
could we possibly never see him again?
I started to
scream, “Snoopy! Snoopy!” and then heard a faint jingle. “I see
him,” Steve yelled. And then suddenly I saw two glowing orbs of
light that were his eyes. I was still yelling, heart still
pounding, as he slowly sniffed his way towards me. The moment he
was near enough I scooped him up wanting to kiss him and kill
him at the same time.
We trudged
out of the woods and when we got inside I dumped him into his
bed and yelled at him never to do that again. He just looked at
me in bewilderment, not understanding my angry tone. What could
he possibly know of a silly human’s frightened, possessive love?
All he knew
was at long last, spring had come to New England.
May 29, 2008
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