Spring’s in the Air

Finally, in all its fragrant force and dewy sparkle, spring is singing the song of rebirth. If this sounds like a bombastic and overwritten first sentence, so it is. This is how it looks from my window. Nature in overdrive.

Two species of birds have built nests outside, and the parent-birds are busy bringing wiggling worms to their babies. The maple tree in the backyard burst with green, where only weeks ago its branches looked like skeletal fingers. An eruption of weeds looks so gorgeous and flowery that I have no thought of pulling them out just yet.

But something in me is uneasy.

I had wrestled with spring-uneasiness for years, not knowing its source. Yesterday I ran into this quotation from Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first President and a renowned scientist: “Miracles sometime occour, but one has to work terribly hard for them.” By definition, Miracles are supernatural. But to me life in all its forms is the greatest miracle. Here is a miracle I didn’t work for. I didn’t earn it.

I go through this every time there’s good news. I ask what I’ve done to deserve it. In this case what I’ve ‘done’ is live through a winter. Not enough, by any measure.

I think it’s more than my Jewish DNA to be suspicious of the glorious and the good. The echo of my grandmother saying, “why should it be easy when it can be hard?” is a small part of my discomfort at unearned gifts. {I can see you slapping your forehead in disbelief; thinking- is she complaining about spring now? But you didn’t have my grandmother.}

The bigger part is the voice that wishes to make sense of experience. The writerly need to find moral patterns in everything. Miracles earned, and misfortunes deserved. This is at the heart of this wrong turn.

And spring, with its bounty of gifts, is an affirmation of my error. Spring just is.

©Elina Lorenz

Enjoy.