Baseball, robins, neighbors announce arrival of spring

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

It snowed Friday, horrid stuff, and it's a bit chilly today but tomorrow is the first day of spring. And I know it's on its way because Wednesday I saw my first sign: neighbor Al outside with his wheelbarrow, working away.

Forget crocuses and robins. There he was, my very own harbinger, across the street in his bright yellow hat (a hard plastic thing he's had since he lived in Quincy, he once explained), light aqua jacket with a little pink trim, (very colorful), blue jeans and sneakers and work gloves, rake in one hand, shovel in the other, scooping up a winter's worth of dead leaves.

Al works methodically. He rakes, piles, bends and lifts the leaves trapped between shovel and rake from the ground into the wheelbarrow and with the back of the shovel pushes them down. Then he removes his hat, wipes his brow, looks up the street, then down the street, replaces his hat, picks up the rake and begins the whole procedure again. Meanwhile Dante, his dog, sits next to him and watches.

Usually it’s Al climbing up a ladder and cleaning his gutters that is my first sign of spring. But not this year. Somehow some vagrant leaves, no doubt mine, flew across the street and managed to get trapped under Al's evergreens where they have remained untouched all winter. This must have driven Al crazy. Al's front lawn is a carpet. From my office window, I watch Al work. He's like something you plug in, not wind up because he never winds downs. He goes at an even pace and then he stops. On. Off. These are his settings.

The first time I saw Al in his off mode I thought he was dead. He was motionless, slumped on a chair just inside his garage, his hands folded, his head down. I raced across the street. "Al! Al! Are you all right?" I shouted, trying to remember if it's three breaths to every thump on the heart or five. He lifted his head. "Huh? Whatdyah say?" he answered. I have since learned that resting is as much a part of Al's routine as working. He works. He rests. He rakes. He relaxes. There's a rhythm to his days.

As there is to the seasons.

Wednesday, Al inspired me to venture outside and at least look at the dead things suffocating my little garden near the end of the driveway. Crocuses and daffodils were under a winter's worth of debris. I could see the tiny tendrils struggling to be free. But the thought of going into my garage and searching for gardening gloves and a rake and then attacking this mess was daunting. I decided to walk the dog instead.

The day even felt like spring. It was golden and balmy, the ground soft, the air sweet, the dog's fur warm to the touch. And there on the high school softball field was yet another sign: Mickey Kincade raking home plate, the doors of his truck wide open, the radio turned up, the sound of a baseball game, pre-season but still baseball, filling the air.

This was pure spring, the crackle of the station not quite on the dial, the announcer's cadence and familiar voice, the welcome phrases - "two balls, two strikes," "on deck," "It's a long fly ball, deep to center field!" And all at once last weekend's frigid rain and the promise of future snow seemed the aberration, not this day's warmth.

Mickey waved and stopped raking and walked toward me and said, "Hey, now I know it's spring because you're here." And the funny thing is is that this was exactly what I was thinking, that it must be spring because here was Mickey outside in his shirtsleeves, readying the field for play. I went home and found a rake and some ambition and dug out the dead dusty miller and scooped up all the leaves in my garden. Fifteen minutes later I had unearthed a small patch of spring in my own front yard.

Al came over. "Hey, look at you. I guess spring has sprung," he said. And then a friend drove by, backed up, stopped and got out of her car. "It must be spring. Look at you in your garden." It's the same for everyone, isn't it? A little warmth, a little sun, a rake, a walk, birds chirping, green things peeking up from the ground, the ground soft, the windows open, the sounds of baseball, someone working in the yard and winter, no matter how it hovers, is yesterday because spring really is here.