Spring replaces a winter rife with discontent

The Boston Herald

BEVERLY BECKHAM

The national threat level: from orange to yellow and back again. Twenty degrees one day, zero the next. Snow everywhere. And bad news. Month after month of it. Except for the miracle of Elizabeth Smart, it was all bad news.

The winter was miserable. It was long and dark and hard and scary. And it refused to leave. But here we are on the other side of it. Most of us anyway. Those of us who didn't lose anyone to the winter or the war. For us, finally, the bad time is over. It's May and if it's a little cloudy and rainy, who cares? Spring has arrived and we're still here, our world and our country safer than they were just a few months ago. The troops are coming home and TV is full of reunions, not funerals. And the things we feared would happen, did not. And if the world is not exactly at peace or as safe as we'd like it, it's safer and more peaceful now than we imagined it would be when we were glued to our TVs, with winter howling at our doors.

Maybe that's why this spring, though late and erratic and stingy with its sunshine, seems brighter and more beautiful than any spring ever.

I sat on a bench in the Public Garden last week and everything dazzled. The swan boats making their way through the water, the children, coats flung off, chasing pigeons, the weeping willow trees, green and lacy, bent to the water, the people in all shapes and sizes, walking and sitting and smiling.

In my front yard, we lost two junipers to the winter, sturdy things that had survived 30 years. They were the size of rulers when we planted them. They grew taller than yardsticks. Last summer we transplanted them - there were six in all. Four survived. In the fall I planted 100 tulips. Fewer than 30 bloomed. I have less in my garden this year, but I see more.

Two weeks ago there were no peonies poking out of the soil, no lupine, no bluebells and no green on the lilac bush. I assumed that winter had killed them, too. But this week, the peonies emerged, just a little but there they are. And the lilac bush turned from brown to green. The sun helps. It helps us all. It prods spring and us along. But even without it, things bloom.

The magnolia is pink, the heather purple, the forsythia as yellow as corn and the 30 yellow tulips at the top of my driveway couldn't be any prettier. And the birds are back, cawing and whistling. And the squeak of baby carriages and bicycles. And the ping of baseballs hitting metal bats. This spring feels like an old friend you thought you'd never see again, someone you put on a plane last fall and expected to return but who called midwinter and said, "I'm not coming back." But then did.

Spring arrived late, but it came after all. It has taken so long to get here and it's not here to stay. Already the weeping willows have lost their look of new green. Turn around and the tulips will be gone. We can't let these days sneak by. We can't be so busy at work or preoccupied with problems or annoyed that we don't have full wattage that we neglect to see everything that's unfolding and unfurling.

Not this spring. This spring demands that we pay attention.