TO OUR EVE

Dear Spike:

There was a warm, slightly moist texture to the air today. It hung around even after the sun turned in. I took the opportunity to do some work in the backyard, knocking down last year’s sunflowers and checking the grapevines for buds. Sure enough, they were there — tiny, cottony buttons pushing through the chalky brown wood.

In the front yard, the snow melted away this week to reveal, pushing up through the wet dirt, the first green fingers of our crocuses, daffodils and tulips. Above the budding trees, the mountains are still arresting in their white dress uniforms and will be for months to come — but there is no question Spring has made her debut.

I’m fond of aspects of every season. I love Summer for her long, soft nights and even for the parching harshness of her days. I love Winter for his jubilance and for the way he makes our home feel so much less a structure of brick and wood and so much more a living benefactor of our family. I love Fall for his artistic whimsy and for the unsubtle ways in which he begs our mindfulness.

But could I choose a season as my bride, I would choose Spring. Bringer of fife. Revealer of things unseen. And this time around, herald of my child’s coming.

Of course, she’s not one for marriage. Spring is delicate and fleeting here. She’ll disappear a few times more before she takes her final stand against Winter, sometime in May. And then she’ll vanish, melting into Summer like a snow bank into a mountain stream.

She is, as we all are, ephemeral.

I remember once hearing a man describe the moment that he first held his child — the realization that she would one day die was so striking and sad to him that he had to hand her away. I’ll never get that image out of my head — a man so afraid to accept the consequences of life that he allowed a moment of its most glorious beauty to be lost upon him forever.

There is in this world much to be lost if we think only of what is to be lost. I prefer to acknowledge Spring’s impermanence as to better appreciate her magnificence.

Same too, for you. The glory and beauty of infancy will be with us for such as short time — I’m certain it is better to embrace and enjoy that than to mourn it. So it goes for childhood. So it goes for adolescence (and, perhaps that is very good.) So it goes for us all.

But when I look into the mirror, I still see a little boy. And when I sleep, I still have his dreams. I think those are my father’s dreams. I think they belong to his mother. To her father. To his mother. To her father. And on and on to our Eve.

I like to think that is Spring, inside us all, waiting out Winter, waiting again to bring new life, to reveal new buds on the vines. To come, to be, to leave.

Such is beauty.

Love,
dad