Spinal Tap

It's Tuesday morning when I first sit down to write this post, and the sunshine is blazing through the massive eastern windows of the waiting room in the children's hospital oncology clinic. Brilliant light glares through the ten-foot-high wall of glass with an intensity that seems overzealous for so early in the season. It flashes off of glossy magazine covers and sparkles cheerily through the saline fluid in Jonah's IV bollus. It warms the back of my shoulders to the point of discomfort and renders the feeble, electronic glow of my laptop screen almost useless. 

It's hard to believe that only one week earlier, I was snapping photos of snow falling on my flower garden. This sudden explosion of summery heat has set me—and my spring tulips—into a kind of squinty-eyed shock. Pale, winterized north Idaho inhabitants like me generally require a more gradual change of season. I'm used to waiting through drizzly May days for the occasional break in the clouds when a patch of promising sunlight will rest on the rug just long enough to lend it a hint of lingering warmth. I am used to keeping the winter coats ready on their hooks, just in case, until sometime in July. I am used to sending my kids to their first morning swimming lessons of the summer when the outdoor thermometer still reads 48°. But this? I am not used to this. This is true water park weather, and it's only the first week of May. 

Jonah is sprawled out horizontally across one of the small armless waiting room couches. It's safe to say that he is basking, soaking his skinny limbs in the warm tide of sunshine that washes over him. All he needs is a beach towel and a pair of trunks. And yet, here he is, several floors above the street, on a hill overlooking Spokane, waiting not for a for trip down the waterslide into the pool but for a trip down the hallway into a windowless procedure room lit by fluorescent tubes, for an early-morning spinal tap and a dose of toxic drugs. 

Hardly a summer holiday. 

I glance up from my over-bright screen and make brief eye contact with another mom who is sipping hospital coffee from a white styrofoam cup. The sunlight sets curlicues of steam aglow between her face and mine. I very nearly say hello, but she quickly turns her puffy, sleep-starved eyes away toward the window. I follow her gaze to where the tops of the pine trees are lost in the brightness of the sunrise.

Next to her, a dark-haired boy, about Jonah's age, is also waiting, slouched low in his chair. His eyes are closed, and his crossed arms rest across his belly. They are by far the hairiest arms I have ever seen on a child. I try not to stare, wondering if this kid is getting the same chemo as my son. Jonah's own hair held out against the drugs for a long time—much longer than for most cancer patients—but now he hardly even has hair on his head, let alone on his extremities. Even his eyebrows and eyelashes have thinned.

I turn my attention toward him. His feet are propped on a lime-green ottoman, and he is reading—or pretending to read—his paperback. "You want anything?" I ask. Then I remember. "Oh, nevermind. I forgot you can't have anything until after your LP." 

He looks at me from over the top of his book and slowly shakes his head. "Nope." He punctuates the word with a soft pop of his lips on the 'P'. The other mom glances back toward me for just an instant, and then again back to the window, half-closing her eyes against the brightness.

I wonder about trying to meet these people, about asking this other boy his story, maybe make a new hospital friend for Jonah. But asking those sooo-what-brings-you-here conversation starters can be painful and distressing when they are asked in a children's oncology ward. ("Oh, brain radiation. And you?") Sometimes small talk seems, well, too small in the shadow of the enormous, cancerous elephant in the room. So I decide to keep quiet and return to my typing. Besides, I think to myself, it's early, and we are all so sleepy and ridiculously warm in here anyway. 

• • • • • •

The day before, Jonah and I had driven to Riverfront Park to eat a late lunch following a checkup, and we came unprepared for the weather. The afternoon heat slowly baked into Jonah's black jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, while the May sunlight threatened to burn his bald head. My dark hair absorbed the heat like a cast iron skillet. We moved to some semi-shade and ate our sandwiches on a dusty, metal-grid picnic table. Nearby, a half-dozen flip-flopped moms with squealing children splashed—some of them fully dressed—in the park fountain. No men among them, and not a wedding ring to be seen reflecting the sparkle of afternoon light. At least two of the moms displayed tattooed cleavage above the squeeze of their strapless sundresses as they bent low to lift their dripping toddlers. Every mom is wearing shades. This, I noted, appears to be the year of the gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses. 

Jonah eyes, fortunately, were transfixed by the colorful rise and fall of merry-go-round horses on their gilded poles. He was listening intently to the carousel music and asked if the tunes were played live on a real organ—an instrument he hopes to learn to someday. Maybe he was considering future summer jobs—organ gigs at carousels and baseball parks.

"No, I don't think so. Just a recording. But I bet there used to be an organ in there at one time," I said. 

"Oh," he said, disappointed. He slowly dragged a limp french fry back and forth through a puddle of ketchup and then set it back down. "Ugh. I am roasting."

This is the kind of unseasonable heat that makes politicians climb onto their climate-change soapboxes and panicked consumers trade in their Hummers for pocket-sized electric cars. It is also the kind of weather that sends flabby humans of northern European descent out in herds to overwhelm the city streets and public parks with vast displays of blindingly pale flesh. Human dignity, it seems, cannot compete with the promise of a spring sunburn. Too-tight shorts and too-short tube tops parade unabashedly across the lush lawns while well-fed seagulls hop and flap eagerly after them, hoping a few bits of that muffin-top whiteness will drop in Wonder Bread crumbs to the ground. 

• • • • • •

The cool air of early morning is sweet when we walk to the car the next day, but as we pull onto the interstate to return to the hospital for Jonah's spinal tap, the sun is already poised to dominate the day—not so much as a hint of a cloud to interrupt the faintly blue expanse above us. Watching the drivers in the east-bound lane flipping down their visors and shielding their eyes with their hands against the rising glare, I am glad to be driving west.

Jonah tilts his seat back and snoozes on the way. I enjoy his company, but when he sleeps, I savor the silence—or rather, the steady hum and whoosh of the highway—instead. The rare luxury of uninterrupted thought makes me feel all glowingly poetic inside. I have a habit of trying to compose witty similes or apt metaphors while I'm driving in a quiet car. I imagine catchy first lines for short stories that I will never attempt to write. Often, I use the time to pray. This morning, however, I am thinking of styles of sunglasses, and how they seem to forge the way for styles of regular glasses, and how they serve better than carbon-14 for calculating the dates of old photos. (Ah, yes, 1982. The year of the saucer-sized frames with the graduated pink-tinted lenses.) This is deep stuff. 

The brilliance of my thoughts is interrupted by the sudden dimness of the hospital parking garage. Jonah sits up and looks around. He sighs, and his shoulders slump when he remembers where he is. 

• • • • • •

At last, the nurse steps into the waiting room and says Jonah's name. He sighs audibly again. He does have his favorite hospital activities that he looks forward to—especially when the music therapist is there. But on spinal tap days, he dreads the hospital because he knows how he will feel afterward. "You ready, buddy?" the nurse asks in that too-chipper, slightly condescending sing-song tone that he hates. He shakes his head firmly but stands up anyway, shoving his book into his backpack with unnecessary force. "O.K! Let's go!" she says, flashing coffee-stained teeth between freshly glossed lips. She takes brisk steps, but Jonah shuffles, and she has to turn and wait for him to catch up. The IV pole squeaks and rattles along the linoleum tiles, and I hold the IV line up to keep it from getting tangled in the wheels or caught underfoot.

In the procedure room, several nurses are waiting, and one of them attaches Jonah to several monitors—heart rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels. Then the anesthesiologist arrives to ask the usual list of questions. He's young and blond and wearing jeans and a massive silver ring and a silver bracelet below his rolled-up shirt sleeves. Very hip. He cracks a few jokes, makes small talk about sports, and manages to get a smile or two out of Jonah while filling syringes with milky-white propofol. "Milk of amnesia" he calls it.

At last the doctor arrives, all five-foot-aught of her, with her mass of brown corkscrew curls. Probably the world's cutest oncologist. The oxygen starts, then the proposal, and then Jonah's eyelids flutter closed. He's out. The doctor preps his back with iodine, and moments later Jonah's spinal fluid begins to drip slowly into a clear vial. A nurse walks quickly by us to prepare for the next patient's procedure, and her elbow knocks a vial of propofol onto the floor. It shatters, leaving a spray of glass shards and white liquid on the floor. The nurse gasps with dismay. "Oh, no need to cry over spilled propofol," I say dryly, and the whole room of doctors and nurses erupts into laughter. 

We're all still smiling as the oncologist injects a syringe full of acid-green methotrexate into Jonah's spinal fluid. And with that, the procedure's done. All that's left is to wait for him to sleep off the anesthesia. For most kids, this takes a matter of minutes. For Jonah, it can take hours for him to come around, and more often than not, he wakes up sick. This time, they wheel him into an infusion room where they let him recover by himself in a more comfortable bed. I turn down the lights and sit with him in the darkness for a few minutes, just to make sure he's resting quietly. Someone down the hall is carrying on a one-sided conversation in hurried Spanish. 

When I open the door to the hallway, my eyes take a moment to adjust. I return to the playroom to chat with the music therapist who has taught Jonah to play a few simple chords on the ukulele during previous visits. The room is hot and summer-bright. As she asks how Jonah's doing, I see the same mother and son from the waiting walk past the doorway and down the hall. 

A little girl walks in and immediately sits down to play with a large plastic dollhouse. Her mother has buzzed her own salt-and-pepper hair close to the scalp in order to, I assume, show her solidarity with her balding child. I've seen a few other parents who have done the same. Above her head is a computer printout on the wall depicting the complete pantheon of Disney princesses with egg-bald heads. Snow White on chemo. Sweet, I guess. 

When Jonah finally wakes up, it's well past noon, and he is woozy and nauseated, but I manage to help him to sit up and drink a sip of orange soda—the only thing that sounds palatable to him—before we head out the clinic doors. He carries a pink emesis bucket with him, just in case. Minutes later, we are back on the highway, driving home through miles and miles of velvety-green hills under a brilliant blue, cloudless sky. I am wearing last year's sunglasses. Soon we will be home. And Jonah is already talking of playing baseball.

The Clouds Ye So Much Dread

Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness 

instead of lightbecause their deeds were evil. 

—John 3:19

From the pink glow behind my eyelids on Tuesday morning, I could see that the sun was shining before I had even opened my eyes. The window to our bedroom faces east, and the warm light leaking through the yellow curtains spoke of crocuses and daffodils and soft, damp grass. Sitting up in bed, I peered through the glass and let my dilated pupils contract. Below me lay a street washed clean by night-rains and sparkling beneath a blinding sunrise.

After months of snow and weeks of drizzle, these bright mornings blast through the gloom with a jolt of energy that no quad-shot latte can rival. Sunshine spills over the yard, puddles on the carpet and trickles into my soul. By the time I pull the living room curtains as wide as they will go, I am already inspired, ready to tackle projects that have lain untouched for months—ready to sew duvet covers, try new recipes, push strollers, plant seeds, pull weeds, get dirt under my fingernails. Goodbye, clouds. Hello, life.

My name is Hannah, and I am addicted to sunlight.

I don’t remember when I first noticed that a lack of sun was resulting in painful withdrawals, but as I’ve grown older, I’ve found that the weather can hold more than a little sway over my mood. When the sky is gray, my thoughts tend to be gray as well. I struggle to get myself going in the mornings. I drink one too many cups of coffee. I stare blankly at the monochromatic blandness, and I sometimes wonder what on earth possessed us to leave Texas: I could be driving past sun-warmed fields of bluebonnets right now, and instead I’m going numb scraping ice off my windshield.

Short, dark days find me fighting against a short, dark temper, and by the time we give up on saving daylight near the end of the year—when our clocks “fall back” with a dull thud—the loss of sunlit hours starts to rankle.

When the elderly choose to flee the frozen north and spend their winters in Scottsdale or Miami, I do not laugh. I sympathize. Maybe I am merely a snowbird who has not yet learned to fly. Why shouldn’t blue horizons and pink hibiscus brighten the winter of life? With our hair and teeth turning gray, why should we stay to watch the sky and earth do the same?

There’s a reason you’ve never heard the word “bleak” used to describe a mid-summer’s day. Warmth and light need no defense. Light was the very first created thing. And it was good. Does a “cold” shoulder or a “dark” glance ever describe friendliness and joy? Does not the very nature of things tell us what cold and darkness ought to communicate to our poetic sensibilities?

I have friends who claim to love winter. This I do not understand. Not in the least. Nay, not even a little tiny bit. Winter is cold. Winter is dark. Winter is colorless and confining. Winter kills. When people say they look forward to winter, it strikes me with the same discordant note as when churchy people say they look forward to death. Yes, by all means, look forward to what’s on the other side, but do not look forward to death. Death itself is the curse. And I cannot help but think of winter in the same way—as a thing that must be overcome. Winter is a good only insofar as it is a means to arriving at spring.

In order to be enjoyed, winter must be conquered and subdued. We war against it with down parkas, with fiberglass insulation, with UV lamps, with tanning beds, with vitamin D capsules, with tropical beach screensavers, with wood fires, with hot cider. From November to March, my home can feel like a castle under siege; we may not escape its walls without wool hats and snow shovels—the shields and weapons of our hibernal battle.

When I was 13, my family spent the winter in Warsaw, Poland, where the color of virtually everything we saw was a cold gray—clouds, ground, snow, trees, buildings, and even clothing. The sun rose at 10:00 and set at 4:00. There were days when the sun itself seemed to have had the life sucked from it, days when color film seemed a superfluous commodity. Countless pitiable souls had given themselves over to fifths of cheap vodka in their pursuit of a remedy to the chill without and the darkness within. We felt the oppression of that winter ourselves. It was the only time I can remember ever seeing my mother give way to inexplicable tears.

Snow, I grant, is beautiful in its way, but I always feel that it’s at its best when viewed from indoors while it gleams fresh under a clear blue sky and tries for all the world to mimic the white sands of a subtropical beach. I, for one, am dreaming of a green Christmas. I’d trade a thousand soggy snowmen for one sun-drenched sandcastle.

During the season of Epiphany when the days are dim and the nights long, we sing the hymn “As With Gladness Men of Old,” and the final verse always makes my heart swell with longing:

In the heavenly country bright,
Need they no created light;
Thou its light, its joy, its crown,
Thou its sun which goes not down…

Sun which goes not down. Meditate on that. I think I know why my stalwart ancestors settled in Norway; it was surely summer when they arrived, and that midnight sun must have seemed very near to the heavenly country bright. The very thought leaves me pining for the fjords. Little did those pre-Viking hoards know what awaited them come November. Maybe those dark, tiresome winters were behind all the pent up aggression that my distant forebears eventually unleashed on the rest of Europe. And while I may not feel the urge to ransack a village at the end of a long, drab season, I'm certainly tempted to be unreasonably irritable with my family.

When sun finally does break through the gray, as it did this Tuesday morning, the effect is glorious, and I need little other help to embrace the morning. On those days, it's easy to love whatever I meet, and you may even find me humming a tune before I reach the coffee pot. But I cannot spend nine months of the year in fetal position waiting for those sun-days to arrive.

This succession of gray days is trying. But I also know that it has been good for me. When the sun retreats for days on end, it tests my patience and my hope. When that created light grows dim, it drives me to seek a light that endures in spite of thick clouds and short days and winter winds; it drives me back to that sun which goes not down. Light—unchanging, unwavering, unerring Light—shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it: good news that should make for a very good morning indeed.

Betrothal

“There is nothing I so abominate for young people as a long engagement.”
 —Mrs. Croft in Jane Austen’s Persuasion.

Today is Shrove Tuesday, Mardi Gras, and snow flurries have mingled and danced with sunshine since dawn, now gray, now bright, now gray again. Who leads this reel and who follows? I am dizzy in the midst of all this swirling indecision. Blades of green and flakes of white contend for dominance on the ground beneath my feet. For now, the white is winning.

The weather is in that state of limbo we call March, but which the calendar still obstinately calls “Winter.” Nevermind that the snow started falling long before the Calendar informed us, in its authoritarian way, that Winter could officially begin.

From its lofty vantage, my Calendar has a clear view through the kitchen window of what is now going on outside, and it knew that Spring was ready to move in weeks ago. A ridiculously fat robin was out there, hopping around the yew branches in plain sight. Sun was lazily warming the clusters of primroses blooming on my table. Snow was melting, and mud was rising. A pile of children’s black rain boots littered my floor. But the over-anxious Spring must have looked up through the fingerprint-smeared glass, noticed the hard gaze of my Calendar, and, realizing its sad mistake, left without saying goodbye. As if the snow had not lingered long enough, that decorative dictator hanging from my cupboard door insists that Spring is still two weeks away. Cruel, cruel.

• • • • • •

March is always engagement. Betrothal. It is the Already/Not Yet of every year. It is (the Calendar notwithstanding) neither Winter nor Spring; it is neither celibicy nor marriage. Winter is retreating, but Spring, as yet, is nothing but a sharp desire, a promise unfulfilled.

I and the naked branches are wearing this ring that glitters like ice. It weighs us down like wet snow. But these vows will be fulfilled. The dress is purchased, and the date is set. Already I feel the sun—like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber—lend its heat to the table where my cup of coffee grows cold.

March is pregnancy awaiting birth. Those warm days that come with greater frequency as the month wears on bring all the thrill and disappointment of false labor. Hope deferred maketh the heart sick. The new life for which we yearn is buried in damp earth. Locked inside its womb. I feel the pangs, and I watch the frozen ground for signs of dilation, effacement. Nothing. Braxton and Hicks, how I hate you. The whole creation groans.

The high and mighty Kitchen Calendar has also decreed that Lent begins this week. There it is, printed in stark black and white: “Ash Wednesday.” Tomorrow we die.

• • • • • •

Every morning, I peer through the curtains, hoping for fresh signs of green. I check the forecast and see nothing but snow. But I feel a rumbling that the weatherman has missed. It is the rumble of thunder not from the clouds but from the earth—the chest-rattling sound of a heavy stone rolling. 

I am ready for the sun to burn through this cosmic permafrost. I long to fling the windows wide to an air perfumed not with embalming spices but with hyacinths and lilacs. I want to hurry through the front door and discover the shroud has melted away. I want to turn and find myself unexpectedly face-to-face with the “gardener” only to realize that He is the Spring—the Resurrection for whom my long-betrothed soul aches.

This is Lent. This is a wilderness. Forty weary days awaiting consummation. Forty dreary days of relentless rain. Forty days of testing. Of hunger and thirst. Verily I say unto you, I will drink no more of the fruit of the vine, until that day that I drink it new in the kingdom of God. This is a long engagement. This is a pregnancy overdue.

This is March. In the empty fields I can see where rocks have surfaced through the snow-speckled mud. But resurrection will come: these hills will live again, and these stones will become bread. These days of fasting will end.

Send out the wedding invitations. This long engagement will soon reach its fulfillment. The Calendar cannot hold it back. The snow cannot lead this dance forever; the sunshine will cut in and begin the nuptial feast in earnest, strewing flowers in its path.

The Gym of Eden

Whew! My muscles and my back are very sore as I write this. I wish I could say that it was because I performed some great athletic feat, but no. I merely spent a couple of hours digging in the flower beds yesterday. In my defense, I did go beyond the ordinary weeding and instead hauled out the big shovel to excavate an inexcusable amount of invasive grass that had woven itself underground into a dense tangle of roots, some of which were as thick as my thumb and wrapping their evil tentacles around my tulip bulbs. It was hard work. But still, I feel like a sissy being this wiped out by a little spring weeding. (Oh to be able to take ibuprofen again!) Nevertheless, this is the good kind of sore, and my hands are the good kind of dirty.

I suppose that, after my last post, I should mention that the sunshine is definitely back. I'm pleased to report that the thermometer has been peeking its little head above the 70° line for a few days now. It's been lovely. And getting my vitamin D from the sky instead of from a bottle is, quite literally, priceless. I love spring—almost as much as I love summer.

A day this fine should not be spent indoors. This is perfect gardening weather and park weather and strolling-around-the-neighborhood weather. I'd be crazy to sit at a computer typing a blog post right now. Heh.

Having never been a member of a gym, I may not be qualified to say this, but I honestly cannot understand how gyms stay in business during weather like this. Physical therapy, of course, makes sense to me. And winter gym time make a little bit of sense to me. But when it's 73°, the sun is shining, a light breeze is blowing, the yard needs attention, and the birds are singing, getting your exercise inside of a big, boxy room lit with fluorescent tubes while plugging yourself into a pair of earbuds makes absolutely no sense to me.

Yesterday, as I did my squats and lunges with the help of a shovel, my soundtrack was a chickadee and a woodpecker. My workout partner was an enthusiastic two-year-old who could hardly contain his joy as I unearthed two fat beetle larvae, a snail, a beetle, a handful of worms, and an army of ants.  I got to chat with my next door neighbor. I said hello to passersby who stopped to admire the tulips. I had the satisfaction of separating the weeds from the flowers and preparing the ground for planting.

I was dive bombed by a hummingbird. No really. I was.

Is there anything so metaphorically rich as gardening? Is there anything so unpoetic as a treadmill? Is there any air so invigorating as this lilac-scented breeze? Is there any air so uninviting as the sweaty aroma of the locker room? Will somebody please explain to me how anyone of sound body and mind could opt for the latter?

Even if you don't have a garden—which we didn't for years—just running around at the nearest park seems far superior to anything I could be doing with a gym membership. And if you've got kids, I guarantee that they are dying to run around outside anyway, so we might as well include them in the fun.

It's spring! So get some sun. Get some dirt under your fingernails. Get some fresh air. And get some exercise where the lilacs smell stronger than the gym socks.

Hey, ho, the wind and the rain

"It's snowing still," said Eeyore gloomily.
"So it is."
"And freezing."
"Is it?"
"Yes," said Eeyore. "However," he said, brightening up a little, "we haven't had an earthquake lately."

This year, winter and spring seem to have shaken hands and reached some sort of compromise, granting each other the authority to intermittently take charge over one another's appointed months. Winter was unusually mild and green, but this week, spring is doing its best to pose as winter.

Freezing temperatures and a forecast of "possible snow flurries" greeted us this morning as an unwelcome finale to yesterday's trunk-snapping, flower-stripping winds—winds that turned the sky a sickly brown for most of the afternoon. Our yard is littered with the debris of Monday's gales, and the tulips are staring pathetically up at me with a uniform expression of exhaustion and defeat. In the glass of the living room window, I can see that my own expression reflects theirs.

Only in recent years have I discovered how much the weather affects my mood. It's hard to put a spring in my step when there is no spring in the air. If I let them, these blustery days can turn me into a real Eeyore— Eeyore living in a house full of Tiggers.

Dreams of a green, sprouting vegetable garden are not going to be realized anytime this week. Or next, judging by the forecast. The seed packets sitting on my counter all say, in their matter-of-fact way, "Plant in the ground after all danger of frost is past." All danger? That would give us, let's see, the last two weeks in August. Maybe. If it's a good year. I've seen frost on the Fourth of July.

So here I sit near a bright window, warming my hands against a mug of very hot tea, letting the steam rise into my face to clear my stuffy head and ease the disappointment of hope deferred.

The truth is that, living in northern Idaho, gardening is really a matter of playing the odds. It takes a gaming spirit and a sense of humor. What are the chances of snow in May? Are you willing to bet your crop on it? Ante up. And keep a spare ace up your sleeve. Wear your poker face. Don't let the sunshine fool you.

Sunny skies may have replaced yesterday's brown, but the cheery blue, like a squirting trick corsage, is nothing but a cheap practical joke; it lures us with all the illusion of springtime friendliness and then douses the unsuspecting optimist with a blast of chilly reality. Haha. Very funny. Where's my coat?

Truthfully, I do know that spring is already here and that these cold days are nothing extraordinary. I have no doubt that warmer weather will be on its way here again soon. And in the meantime, I have a fire. And a warm mug. And guileless sunny faces all around me. The tulips are even beginning to look like they'll recover.

Oh, and we haven't had an earthquake lately.

Hello, Starling

March may still be a month away, but last month came in like a lamb and went out like a lamb, with nary a lion to be seen. While news of northeastern snowstorms and midwestern blizzards arrives on my doorstep, my doorstep is a balmy 43 degrees and basking in unseasonable sunshine.

My yard seems to think that spring is here already. The maple trees and the lilac bush are pregnant with leaves; early buds are growing round and plump all along their wintry stems. I saw the timid green tip of a tulip peeking from the wet earth like a periscope, as if to verify whether the war with winter has truly been won after so brief a battle. Cornflower seedlings have pushed their way through a blanket of soggy fall leaves, expecting to find daffodils and starlings in their midst.

Starlings did, in fact, arrive.

Last Sunday, as my family stepped out the front door on our way to the car, a flock (or a murmuration, I'm told) of hundreds, maybe thousands, was rollicking in the maple branches and among the spruce needles and along the power lines and in the blue air. They were chirping and hopping and flying in sudden bursts, pursued by unseen squirrels.

The sound of birdsong and rustling wings fluttered down on every side of us—snowed us under—and made us all freeze in our tracks (the only freezing to be found on that January day). The bare trees were unexpectedly alive—not with green leaves but with brown and black wings. It was like a scene from Hitchcock. Or, maybe, heaven. The baby, in my husband's arms, lifted both hands toward the sky and called out, "Daddy! Bird!"

Just as it seemed that spring was truly here to stay, and that life was overcoming death wherever we turned to look, a gust of wind—or the bark of a dog or a stifled sneeze or a rumor—startled those birds from their perches into scattered flight. They fled like an ill-prepared army abruptly set upon by hostile forces; their panicked company dispersed across the sky—all wings and beaks and furious flapping.

But then, a pattern began to emerge from the squawking chaos. Called to order by the quiet authority of some avian general (who?), they just as suddenly spun their tangled mass into a black sphere, and then unravelled again to be knit into neat rows and regiments—rank upon orderly rank of starling hosts. They looped in perfect formation—now east, now west, now dipping, now rising in synchronized flight. Then, as if satisfied by the success of their impromptu military exercise, their general at last gave a command that sent them speeding across the clouds to the Western horizon.

My sons' wide eyes followed them until they dropped from sight below the housetops, to settle in someone else's leafless trees and to interrupt the Sabbath quiet on someone else's street.

Maybe they stopped here merely to rest, on their way to perform great deeds. Perhaps we seemed to be fearsome giants, deterring them from the conquest of our front yard Canaan, and they are now cursed to roam the blue wilderness for another forty days. Maybe they were surveying the land from their power-line Pizgah. I don't know what Jordans they will have to cross before they can finally settle here. Perhaps they have Jerichos to topple before they can call our street "home." I do know that a week has passed, and the starlings have not returned. Not yet. But the tulip and cornflower, the maple and lilac, the lamb and the sleeping lion all whisper that they will.

They will.