Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Making Way

A few months ago I wrote about my Tenacious Pear. This tough little pear held on through a snow storm and ice, through the worst of our strange winter. Some time in the last few weeks, it fell. I didn't notice right away because I was busy doing other things. One day I was walking in from the car, burdened down with groceries and the ephemera of daily life and I stepped on it. It gave a little bit under my weight, but not completely. It squished a little, but mostly held its tough, resilient shape. As soon as I stepped on it, I knew exactly what it was. I looked up at its bare branch and said a silent goodbye. While I do find delight and meaning in the small things of life, I'm not much one for believing in these sorts of signs.

Last week was that restless part of winter. The days are getting longer, but the weather isn't getting any better. Chances for snow are past, but not yet time for the burgeoning spring and all of the promise it brings. It's the part of winter that gets me every year. I feel stuck in time. Not quite ready for the buzzing activity of spring and summer, still nostalgic for the cozy hot cocoa warm of dark afternoons and a stark bite in the air, but finding myself surrounded by cold mud and a sense of waiting. I don't like to look forward. I don't like to wish for something other than is. But the time of year seems to force that impatience on me. I think my pear got restless, too. She leaped from her branch into something new. I scooted her off the walkway and into the soft mud under the raspberry canes so she could share the last of her tenacious, lingering sweetness with them. And I found an object for my pervasive sadness.

Today is sunny after days and days of the solid drizzly rain for which this area is famed. Today is a day for heightened restlessness for everyone under my roof. Today I wandered around my back yard, surveying the ravages of winter. With my little tenacious pear in mind along with a jumble of restless thoughts, I glanced at her empty space and I saw them. Today there are the tiniest little gifts of hope on those bare branches where there was nothing yesterday. Small in size, barely white against the dark gray-brown of the branches, but large in promise. Tiny beads of succulence and growth. The beginnings of buds. Buds that I know from past experience will explode into a froth of finery for my mighty pear tree. They will cover three stories with thousands of their sweet and delicate little faces in a few weeks, but today they are just the kernel of a grand idea.

I was sad about my pear last week. Today I applaud her again as she rests in her next phase of life under the raspberries. She saw what I couldn't. She felt the subtle deepening in the air, she wobbled in the breezes from a different source, she heard the whispered secrets from the crocuses under the earth, she knew the time had come. The time to make way. Her purpose as my little mottled talisman was served and she knew it before I did. She took that leap of faith because she knew. There may be some more days of the cold that seeps into everything and holds its captives diminished and shivering. There will be more days ahead of the restless doldrums of the tail end of winter. But in the coming weeks, my pear in her wisdom knew, there will be more brightness than dark, there will be more color than gray, there will be more by degrees until in the midst of an explosion of color and scent and new life we will wonder why we ever doubted its arrival. She felt the buds beneath her and knew it was time to go.

How many times have I ignored these tiny, incremental changes and stubbornly clung to my branch? How often does making way look like giving up? As surely as the Earth slowly makes its inevitable revolution around the sun, change comes. It's never all the same all the time. Will I listen to my tenacious pear? Will I remember that there is a time for remaining tough, untouchable, refusing to follow the crowd, but that just as importantly, there is a time for taking that leap of faith and making way for the blossoming?

21 comments:

  1. Beautiful! I have trouble with this season as well. I think that nature is often the only cure for a restless spirit, as you have described so eloquently here.

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    1. Thank you. Years ago I read some sort of pop-psychology book whose title I can't remember about the seasons of the soul and its main thrust is that we should accept them as they come and use them for what they are. I still struggle with that. I find it distasteful to be so affected by things over which I have no control (i.e. the weather) but alas...

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  2. Jump. Unless of course you think you'll end up squished and moldy on the cement. In that case, hang on. Of course, you are smarter, badder and more resilient than a pear, so it say go for it. You are one hell of a kernel of a great idea!

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    1. Thank you. The thing about my pear is that she got squished, but her core stayed intact. I think this is important.

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  3. Maybe your poor tenacious pear was waiting for that special someone to come along and plant him and her into the ground so that new pear tree can grow and make a lot of little pears. Instead, a person comes along, steps on it and kicks it into the bushes. It might grow there, it is a tenacious little pear, but it would have felt so much better if it had been treated tenderly and with love and placed into fecund soil. Life is so cruel to we tenacious types.

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    1. What's the bumper sticker wisdom? "Grow Where You're Planted"? Life can be cruel, but if we were all "treated tenderly and with love and placed in fecund soil" all the time, would that be very interesting?

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  4. This is lovely, and sums up my feelings about the season as well...in words better put together than I could manage:) I love your outlook on the pear's place in this cycle of life and thing you might find especially lovely raspberries this year, for your pear will surely continue to give and inspire in her new resting place.

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    1. Thank you. I'm really looking forward to the raspberries.

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  5. I think Mother Nature can sure teach us a lot. Sometimes you have to weather the "weather" if you will before the sun shines.

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    1. Yes, yes. I always tell my monkeys when they complain about the rainy days that we need them to make things grow and to be able to fully appreciate the sunny ones. Now if I could remember that, myself.

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  6. "..there will be more brightness than dark, there will be more color than gray.." Beautifully inspiring, not just about the season, but our lives.

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    1. Thank you. The trick is to keep that in mind, no?

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  7. "Will I remember that there is a time for remaining tough, untouchable, refusing to follow the crowd, but that just as importantly, there is a time for taking that leap of faith and making way for the blossoming?"

    You will. You will take that leap of faith and when you look back, you'll wonder why you were so nervous about it in the first place. It's good to be cautious, to prepare, to analyze. It's best to live.

    With much love to you, always.

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    1. Much appreciated. I'm a ditherer prone to sudden action, something I must accept about myself. It's always a leap, whether you prepare for it or not, and you always end up someplace different than where you expected.

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  8. I walked to work in a downpour one day, gray and miserable and soaked, the next was windy but bright and mostly dry. I noticed green things (I am not a very good gardener but I hazard a guess that it was bulb type of flowering thing) poking up from the bare flower beds...and that shade of green made my heart sing.

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    1. I am struck by that very same phenomenon every year. It seems like at some point I would stop being surprised by spring, but then I'm not sure I want that to stop.

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  9. That last paragraph strikes a crazy chord with me. My absurd, unhealthy, ridiculous, and often futile resistance to change is probably the personality trait I would most like to wave away with a magic wand.

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