A basket lined with purple feathers and strings the colors of spring. Eggs within eggs within eggs within rest fossils from other places, other times. Moons and hares and runes (znaki) that my Polish pagan ancestors might or might not have used to help make sense of a unpredictable world.
Yesterday, on the Spring Equinox, we five women gathered for a pot-luck brunch and some sympathetic magic. Or maybe it was just our ritualistic way to manifest our yearnings for warm weather and green shoots and, in general, a world more to our liking.
Tomorrow I head out to see my grandson. Rain, snow, or any weather, he makes me feel as though it’s Spring. There is nothing I like more then spending some time in his joy-filled toddler world.
And I desperately need that feeling. My next door 77 year old neighbor, who was taken to the hospital in an ambulance three weeks ago, apparently has blood leaking into her brain. Another neighbor, who walks with a walker, fell down yesterday and broke her arm.
Today, I took my mother to my brother’s, where low clouds hovered over the Catskill Mountains, and, even though Spring showed no signs of even considering to make its approach, I was still soothed by the serenity of the monotoned wooded landscape.
I’m sure that there were creatures dying somewhere in those acres of trees and stones. But that’s not the same….not the same as when it happens within this concerete and steel warehouse (upscale though it is).
My mother is doing surprisingly well on new medication. She is much less anxious and unhappy. We play cards, laugh, wait together for Spring.
On the white doors along the long hallways in our building hang the various shapes and colors of Spring. There are silk calla lilies on mine. But there is no magic here. Lots of sympathy, but no magic.
Magic is an exhuberant two-and-a-half year old running out to greet his Grammy, who, of course, has brought him a surprise.
Spring will come. Like magic.