Foreshadow of Spring

The sweet fragrance is in the breeze when I step outside. It’s only a hint. But it’s unmistakably nature’s perfume, sweet and spicy, somewhere between honeysuckle and plumeria, a foreshadow of the coming spring. Like a promise from God, it whispers to me, because it still yelps of winter here: cold wind against my face, the cascade mountains on the horizon covered with snow, the ground saturated with rain water.

I seek the source of this promise and find it in a low, dark green scrub with dainty white and pink flowers. I put my nose into those delicate blossoms and breathe in, all the way into the middle of my soul.

The dog tugs on the leash. We walk. He stops on a patch of grass, puts his face into the wind, sniffing the air with his wet, brown nose. He’s better at smelling than me. I wonder of what he smells: other dogs, a child’s dropped lollipop, coffee grounds spilled from a neighbor’s toppled trash can? Or does he smell the murmuring of spring like me?

I’ve recently read a brilliant biography of Dorthea Lange, the iconic Great Depression photographer (think Migrant Mother) by historian Linda Evans. Ms. Evans describes Dorthea Lange as someone constantly, looking. On this walk I vow to look too, like an artist might, like I’ve watched my artist mother do all her life and that I now see my youngest daughter do. Always looking, seeing nuanced shadows, shades of color, comparisons and metaphors, or sometimes even the practical.

One day Emerson tumbles into my office.  She stops, her light blue eyes scanning the desk, and in a split second. “I see you moved your calendar to the other side of the desk,” she says.

Another time, driving in the White Whale, her head cocked to the side, staring at the sky.  “That cloud looks like a clown, mommy.”

I’ve watched my mother mix her watercolors, making four different shades of purple to capture the varied shades in an iris jutting proudly towards the same sky Emerson gazes upon.

This is all detail work, just like writing.

I’m a writer, so I have a need to name things, to put words to them. I want to know the name of the early blooming flower, this giver of spring. When I arrive home and Google it, I can’t find an answer. I text the photo to my master gardener friend, Sally Brunette, “What is the name of this plant?”

The groundhog tells us spring will arrive early this year. I don’t know if it means anything or not, but from my hovel where I work each day on the new manuscript, feeling many days like a shriveled berry amongst mid-winter weeds, I hold this promise close. Spring awaits. Soon I’ll look up from my work and the world will have burst forth with blooming.

And me too, I hope. I will have bloomed, finally, into the woman I want to be, a seeker and looker. Perhaps even, if I find favor with the God I try to please, a capturer of details, a tamer of words into story.