February 2012

 

 

 

….early…not in the sense of the first blooming of them and then more to come…in the sense that there is still a week of February left and they are blooming everywhere and have been for a week or more. Daffodils, that are supposed to be newly blooming on my birthday three weeks hence. But then, it has been a funny old Winter. And a funny old week with its snow and blossoms.

Snow on Sunday, daffodils on Tuesday, on Wednesday I noticed that the grass is carpeted with the tiny pale blue flowers of earliest Spring and Thursday finds me sitting in the sunshine at a cafe in Williamsburg with the air almost too warm for comfort. I always find it hard to let go of Winter, tho’ this has been such an unwintery one, it makes it easier. We might as well just get on with the warmth and the burgeoning and the call to more activity. I think this is the year when I will need my hands in the earth and the blue skies above me more than ever.

I welcomed it all today with the first visit in the New Year to my river beach. It was rather barren, and the tide kept me from walking out to the point with the knobby-kneed cypress seat, but it was beautiful, of course…and I gave my face to sun and my feet to the water and it felt like a good beginning.

I have been back for a week from my trip to the Northwest…it was a gift from my brothers and husband…a respite from caregiving and a rest and a reunion with two dear friends on two beautiful islands off the coast of Washington.

It was all I had hoped it would be with very lazy days, lots of conversation and good food, the seeing of new sights. While I was there, I hardly gave home a thought, which is just the way it seems to work with me. But since I’ve been home, I do think of Washington, and the dear people, and the tall, dark forests, and the moss, and the mist…

There is a bowl of stones on the kitchen counter with most of the stones I collected on the beach on Whidbey Island (but one is on its way to Santa Fe as an earthy Valentine to my nephew), and enough water to almost cover them. I visit the bowl throughout the day and pour little handfuls of water over the stones, watching their dull tops change to deep hues and revealed patterns.

It was good to get away.

And it is good to be home.