Shaking Winter Loose

“April is the month that sets the year in motion, shaking winter loose, turning the world towards the sun, blooming into nature's brightest colors. This change of season is so full of momentum, no wonder we call it spring.”

This delightful quote comes from the pen of Vivian Swift and her book,

“When Wanderers Cease to Roam”. In this charming celebration of settling down, Vivian exchanges her worn rucksack for a permanent home in a small town. She begins to explore the neighborhood, discovering little waterfalls and ancient entrances and enchanting little streets named after trees.

In the chapter, “April,” she writes of “Shaking Winter Loose”.

Shaking winter loose. I love that phrase. It makes me think of my grandma in days long ago, when she did her annual spring cleaning. Grandma would “shake the winter loose” when she hung quilts and blankets and curtains on the clothesline out back. She throttled them with a broom and I giggled. She handed the broom to me, and I gave the blankets a few whacks.

Laughter and sunshine and shaking winter loose, with the promise of hot cocoa and homemade cookies in Grandma's snug kitchen.

She would sweep and dust and I would help. I keenly remember the way the dust particles danced in a shaft of sunlight.

Shaking winter loose.

The still crisp breeze of April ribboning through the windows, colliding with the aromas of Baking Day: bread, sticky rolls and pies.

This side of heaven, there is no aroma more splendid than that.

Shaking winter loose.

It also means rummaging through the closet for last year's sneakers and lighter jackets, shaking off the doldrums with a stroll. It calls for the yearly ritual of walking familiar streets to take in new things: porch furniture, early blooms, robins on worm patrol, babies in strollers, toddlers on tricycles.

Winter's dull blanket is swaying in the wind, shaken loose and pulled back to reveal the unclothed trees of pre-bloom wonder.

Memories, too, are stirred awake. I can see Grandma, looking regal in her everyday apron, brewing coffee on the old wood stove for Grandpa, cranking open the windows and sweeping out the wood chips.

Dust mites, earth's dormant gems, are scattered awake to dance in the ribboning breeze.

Winter is shaken loose, and the world is reborn.

I'm Nobody! Who are You?

I'm nobody! Who are you?

Are you nobody, too?

Then there's a pair of us -- don't tell!

They'd banish us you know!

How dreary to be somebody!

How public, like a frog

To tell one's name the livelong day

To an admiring bog!

>Emily Dickinson

Lately I've been listening for the peepers. A Spring peeper is, according to Wikipedia, "a small chorus frog."

Small, perhaps, but mighty en mass with all those chirpy voices rising into the night. Peepers fill their vocal sacs with air until they look like a balloon, then they let out a "peep" as they release the air.

I love it. 

The sounds in the boggy back fields near my mom's house are so wonderful this time of year. Evening's Great Silence has been unlocked. The tiny heralds of Spring inflate and release their mini balloon warbles in a chorus of celebration.

A spring pond full of peeping peepers can sound like sleigh bells jingling -- only louder.

The poem above, by Emily Dickinson, is one of her most famous and playful works. Ironic, since the author penned nearly 1800 poems but published fewer than 10 of them in her lifetime. 

The peeper frog is tiny; no bigger than your thumb-nail, and its balloon chirp is a comical part of nature. So it is with Dickinson's pithy verse: brief and whimsical.

Yet the combined impact of thousands of these little frogs is, well, shrill and clamorous. It's a collection of chirps, warbles and trills that joyfully announce the next season.

Is it Spring yet? Are we finally rounding a corner? 

Daytime temperatures are getting balmier, and green shoots are popping up everywhere. Porch swings are coming out of storage, and barbecue grills are being called into service. 

The happiest commotion of all is what you'll hear when you lean into the breeze and hear the sounds it carries: the peepers returning and reclaiming the night.

The Swan

April is National Poetry Month. Here is a beautiful poem by Mary Oliver, titled "The Swan":

Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river?

Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air -- 

An armful of white blossoms,

A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned 

into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies,

Biting the air with its black beak?

Did you hear it, fluting and whistling

A shrill dark music - like the rain pelting the trees - like a waterfall

Knifing down the black ledges?

And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds -

A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet

Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river?

And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything?

And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for?

And have you changed your life?

I'm so glad I found this poem to share with you; it captures my recent experience in a nearby cove. Knowing that a pair of swans returns each Spring to the river to nest, I drove to the sequestered spot at water's edge. All the locals know it, and respectfully watch for the birds' return. Their arrival is a harbinger of Spring.

Sure enough, as I inched my car along the riverbank, he was gliding toward me. Dignified. Calm. Regal. I parked, and got situated with my camera. He coasted a bit closer, as if to say, "Here I am. This is my good side. Snap the picture now."

And I did.

Another bird watcher was inching her car along the river's edge, and she motioned me over. In hushed, almost worshipful tones, she enthused, "Go downriver a little ways, and look across the water. She's building the nest!" 

She continued on, smiling and waving like we were old friends. And we were, in a way -- kindred spirits having survived one of the harshest winters Northwest Pennsylvania can dish out. I know our smiles were giddy with relief at having made it through, our faces turned upward toward a benevolent sun. 

I took another look at Mr. Handsome. Then I got back in the car and moseyed on downriver.

There she was.

I didn't want to disturb; peering through the passenger side window, I took it all in -- a beautiful ritual, an affirmation of Life and Rebirth and Spring. A poem, really. She was nesting, and I was a grateful witness. She was sure, intentional, like any mother of the house. Sitting in pure white splendor amid the mud and reeds, she was a study in contrast. Her billowy feathers and gracefully arced neck provided a white ribbon of hope in the debris of winter. I imagine she will be keeping the eggs warm at about the time of the Great Greening Up; that mysterious interval when the forest goes from weary to lush in one eternal blink of our Creator's Eye. 

Oblivious to my presence, she looked this way and that, carefully selecting twigs, grass and reeds for her beautiful egg harbor. She was building and I was watching and the meter of it was a poem - a lovely, awakening display of snowy plumage arranging the loamy earth around itself. 

Thank you, Mary Oliver, for your poem, The Swan. Your parting challenge, "And have you changed your life?" haunts me. It calls to me on the edge of the wind and nudges me into places I haven't thought about since Winter's grip came calling.

Moorings

I need a bumper sticker that states, "I brake for lakes". The lure of a lake has pulled on me ever since I can remember. One of my favorite lake views is at the crest of Big Tree Road when you're about to drop into Lakewood. It's always astonishing, and never the same twice. Draped in fog, locked in ice, gleaming in sunlight, smooth as glass or choppy as a tossed salad, the lake beckons. The road dips toward it and you feel like you might want to drive straight to the water's edge. Which you can do, sort of. At the end of Big Tree, you have to dog-leg it into a cozy waterside neighborhood and wend your way to the edge. 
Moored boats fascinate me. Tethered securely to the pier, rocking gently in nautical rhythms, their sales tucked in, they suggest Tranquility. 
Tranquility and Patience. Soon enough, their sails will billow in a crisp June breeze. Voices will call to each other over the water, and gulls will soar on a trade wind. 
For now, though, the boats wait. Anchored or tied, they wait in that ethereal place where earth and water and sky still cling to the edges of winter.
Capricious winds will tease. Spring Zephyrs will ripple the veiled waters.
And so it is with us, you and me.
Our moorings are in place, but Oh! How we long to sail headlong into the next season. A giddy awakening stirs in our innards, calling for greener horizons; softer views; benevolent watery sunsets.
For now, we must wait. Hunker down and bob gently on slumbering waters. This weekend as I daydream about waving to the passengers on the Chautauqua Belle, I will listen for sneakered feet on a creaky dock. I will imagine the clang of the Captain's bell. I will listen for the cry of the heron. 
The boats are waiting. The world is hushed, still cloaked in browns and greys. This time, too, is important as we sail on toward the greens and blues and deep, vivid hues of Summer.

Listening is Love

Listening is a verb. I looked it up. If you need a quick reminder, a verb is "a word expressing action," according to Webster's. 
Hmmmm. "Action" suggests movement, flow, shifting, adjusting. If anything, listening seems passive, fixed, static.
But when you really think about it, listening takes a certain skill set. It involves intentionally hitting the Pause Button of your day and entering into another person's story. And their story matters. Your choice to listen is an action of love.
There's a cute story I heard once, about a little boy who wanted desperately for his Mommy to know everything about his day. The lad burst into the kitchen where she was prepping the evening meal. As he told his fabulous story, she continued dicing, slicing and sauteing. I'm sure she heard every word; we moms are professional multi-taskers.
Still, that wasn't enough for the boy. He became exasperated. "Mom!" he cried out. "You're not listening!
"Oh, yes, honey. I'm listening," she replied.
"No! I need you to listen with your eyes."
Wow.  The kid has a point. Listening, if it's truly an action word, involves putting down the spatula and locking eyes with the storyteller. 
Listening is something we think we are doing, when in fact we are pushing the storyteller to the margins; hearing him on the periphery. We think we've heard the story, but oh! How much we miss. 
I am guilty as charged. Countless times, I have "listened" to the ones I love while checking my phone, scanning the menu, watching the weather channel and searching for my car keys. Is this listening? Really?! 
No, actually not. It's minimizing the storyteller, telling that precious soul we are taking in words, but not absorbing the weight and importance of the words.
How likely will this lovely daughter, this marvelous human being, come back to me with new stories to tell? The odds are getting slimmer.
I need to hit the Pause Button, silence the phone, pull the car to the curb, and just listen.
Now, before you think you are already well-versed in the art of listening, I have a simple challenge: try listening with no agenda. Go ahead. Try. It's really hard. Honestly -- I sat with a friend recently. As she shared her story, pouring out her heart, I could hardly wait to find an opening and tell my own story.
This is really not okay. Because, in that place where my brain was buzzing with the answers, the opinions, the questions and my own stories, I was missing her words. And they weren't just words; they were pieces of her heart, laid out there on the table -- bare and trembling and aching to be heard.
To march in with my pat answers is a lot like pushing her stuff to the edges because my stuff is far more interesting.
That's kind of rude. 
Listening is love. It's an act of the will, an intentional nod in another person's direction. When you love the storyteller, you need to be willing to listen without formulating your answers. That person really doesn't need your opinion; she needs your humility and grace. She needs your ear and your uncluttered mind. She needs you to lock eyes with her, so she knows without a doubt you care.
This is exhausting. No wonder listening is a verb -- the action of truly listening is a workout. Your listening-muscles will ache later, but keep at it. You just never know when a storyteller needs you to be ready.
Listening is love. Just ask my mom - she's really good at it. I'm quite sure that's why I carry all my most precious stories to her kitchen table. She pours tea. She sits across from me and gives me the gift of her undivided attention.
Thanks, Mom! Thanks for listening with your eyes.

A Patch-Word Quilt

Have you stopped lately, to admire the skills of a quilter? I so appreciate the handiwork of quilters -- the way they can whip up a nine-patch, or spend untold hours piecing together a memory quilt. When I was a girl my grandmother talked wistfully about a quilting circle she had once belonged to. Weekly, these ladies gathered to stitch and sew and talk and laugh and stitch some more. It sounded wonderful to me, but sadly I never learned to sew beyond buttons and occasional hems. When I'm really pressed for time, I resort to duct tape hemming. 
But back to Grandma. One of my favorite quilts that she made was a whimsical patchwork of odd bits: cast-offs; the remains of aprons, hand-me-downs and even worn faded pieces of Grandpa's plaid shirts. "This quilt," she told me, "is made from things nobody wanted anymore." Wow. A full-sized quilt made from dozens of scraps and remnants. Things nobody wanted anymore. Which, all these years later, has got me to thinking. Maybe I can try my hand at quilting. But mine would not be sewn from fabric and thread; mine would be pieced together with words. 
When life stops at its undefined, uncertain edges I could add a bric-a-brac of merry, fortifying words. 
And when I keep tripping over the same memory for the umpteenth time, I could hem it up, silencing the fabric of yesterday with words of healing and resolve.  
To weakened, worn out seams I could sew words of encouragement. This would require good strong thread. The more colorful, the better. 
To become a skilled crafter of "patch-word" quilts, I would need somebody to emulate.
I would like to sit under the tutelage of a master wordsmith...and Who better than God Himself? He takes the frayed edges of our scattered, torn selves and gently mends. His choice words are a patchwork of fulfillment; a story of redemption, personal and real to each of us. To the emptiness at the end of ourselves, He, the Lord, weaves in vibrance and texture and glorious bits of surprise confetti, just because He loves to see us rejoice. 
Your quilt will look different than mine, because your Creator knows the unique stuff that makes you tick. Just as a doting grandma pieces together special fabrics for a beloved child, the One who watches over us all is carefully soothing our hastily basted, gaping wounds and suturing them up with His love. He sees the absurdity of our self importance, and gathers us up in His exquisite embroidery of grace.
Who else but our Creator, our Master Wordsmith, could take the odd bits that nobody else wants, and stitch together a masterpiece? If He can do that -- and He can -- then maybe, just maybe, He can use my feeble attempt at word-weaving to touch a heart, heal a hurt, invite a laugh, quiet a desperate soul. 
If you come to my home, you won't see any handmade quilts. But I hope, during the conversation, you'll enjoy a verbal patchwork of color and joy and hope. And the best part is, you will have added to the finished product; we will have enjoyed our very own quilting circle.
Grandma would be so proud.

Stones of Remembrance

Years ago, a dear friend invited me to lunch. We sat at the river's edge, our picnic table adorned with a simple cloth and bag lunches. In the breezeless August heat, we were oblivious to the future, basking only in the noonday sun. She placed a pile of stones on the table and asked me to choose one. Each of them had a word engraved on it: Forgive, Love, Cherish, Dream, Remember. I liked them all. "Pick one," she encouraged. "Pick one, and keep it - my gift to you," she said. 
Forgive. Amongst the pretty stones, that's the one that called to me, not with urgency, but with a quiet nudge. 
Forgive.
I knew that was my stone. Struggling with a recent move across the country and all the tangled adjustments our family had had to endure, I was kind of upset. Mad, really. Okay, I was really mad: rage with a forced smile; wrath under a thin veneer of contentment. The simple word, "forgive," would start me on a journey that day. 
I put the small stone in my pocket and we talked. There was no judgement at that table, no accusation. Only grace. My friend didn't even ask why I chose that particular stone, but I would tell her later. In that moment, I only needed to feel the heft of it in my pocket, to feel the weight of the word in my heart. 
In the Bible, Joshua 4, there is the story of the "Stones of Remembrance." Twelve stones served as a monument to God's faithful provision -- a reminder of the cutting off of the Jordan River so Israel could cross on dry ground. That pile of stones served as a visual reminder of what God did for His people and the story filtered down to all generations.
My "forgive" stone, on a personal scale, has done much the same: It traveled with me in my pocket, my purse, my palm, on my bed stand. There were times I'd hold it and my heart felt as cold as that little stone. But I knew the word, and wanted the word to belong to me. 
Forgive. 
It was something that had to happen before I could move on and embrace our family's new life. It was time to let go of my old job, a job I'd loved. I had to release my out-West friends and grieve my beloved, silhouetted Rocky Mountains and the jagged majesty of them at sunset. 
With the squeezing, sometimes, of the little rock, I had to open the hand that held the past; I had to release it in order to receive and hold onto the present. Mostly, I had to relinquish my resentment toward the man that brought us back to the home front -- my husband. Slowly, steadily, and with much prayer, I was able to forgive. And it was a great relief. The rage subsided. The realities around me did not change, but my heart did. The struggles did not go away, but now I had the strength to face them. Happily, I was able to talk with my husband, my hard working, frugal, tractor-driving, cop-turned-farmer-husband. We talked, we remembered our love, we reclaimed lost territory that had come between us. 
I remember the summer night I laughed at everything and nothing while the two of us gathered up hay bales in the back field. I drove the tractor while he threw the hay onto the wagon. The sun was setting, and silhouetted against an orange sky I saw, maybe for the first time, the rolling green of the Allegheny Mountains. The view was stunning. We couldn't see the future but we could take in the view, and for that moment it was enough. The word "forgive" had followed me around until I yielded to its gentle call. 
How could I know that a few months later my frugal German farmer husband would die unexpectedly of a heart attack? 
How could I possibly understand that later, much later, I would rediscover the little rock with the big word? Yes, and it would find its way into the pocket of another person I needed desperately to forgive.
I don't know where the stone is now; maybe it's been passed along to remind another soul of God's love in the middle of the mess. All I know is, my friend's ministry of the stones is sending ripples of grace into the community, and now I'm a stone-giver too. I find them in little gift shops, and sometimes I find them on the Lake Erie shore and write my own words on them with a Sharpie marker. I give them to my friends. I say, "Keep this for as long as you need to, then pass it on." I have no idea where the stones might go, but my prayer is they will serve as little reminders in a world filled with uncertainty. May they anchor fragile hearts. May they become stones of remembrance.
A week ago I found the stone that says "Strength" and carried it to a funeral. In the receiving line, I slipped it into the hand of a newly-minted widow. She looked at me. "Something to hold onto," I whispered.