Hyacinth in Window

Hyacinth in Window

Spring is like this hyacinth: it comes out of the darkness. After days and days of cold bare branches and brown earth and stillness as far as the eye can see, one purple flower in a Providence window says otherwise, says the season has turned, says that March, the waking-up month has arrived.

Winter is a long sleep in New England. Mostly we are indoors, in front of our computers, our necks bowed to the text we’ve just received, our hands reaching for the remote and the allure of escape into a mystery, a period drama, even a tawdry reality show. We are wrapped in sweaters, gloves, hats. We are eating hot, heavy food: soup, stew, chili, roasts. The short dark days lull us into waking dreams. We move as if we are underground.

Who knows how it happens, but spring is a miracle every year.  There are clues, of course, night shadows give way gently to the gray morning light; a robin sings lead in a chorus of twittering sparrows; tiny green buds light up the tips of the old lilac bush, though the grass is still snow-scarred and yellow and the rain is cold and my little town looks sooty, weary, forlorn.

Winter has had its way with us. The snowplow has dug furrows in the front yard and heaped driveway stone into the myrtle; fences are battered; chunks of sidewalk break into puzzle pieces; branches and fallen tree limbs and pine cones litter the yards; and the remnants of last summer’s hydrangeas are blown like tumbleweed down the empty streets. The houses nearest the water are still turned inward, windows shaded and shuttered.

And then a day comes in March, a day when the wind still nips but the sun soaks through thick coats and wool sweaters, reaching down into our pale winter bones. And just like the earth, something in us stirs. Something in us sniffs the air and remembers peaches and bicycles and beaches and sultry afternoons when the porch door bangs and the cats stretch and the light is like custard and summer sits by our side.

Spring comes out of the darkness. In March, the light finds us. We open our eyes.