Place entry #6

What a difference a few weeks makes. Duluth is in the thick of the warmest March in recorded history. The high temperature has been above freezing since February 26. We’ve even bumped up against sixty degrees. As a result, our snow is all but gone, except for a dirty patch on the north side of the house that is shrinking daily. Last year, we had snow in the yard past Easter.

The grass has not yet recovered. It is dull brown, as flat and matted as slept on hair. But there is some give to the ground now, and the faint earth smell—life and decay—a welcome change from winter’s sterility. It seems cliché to gauge your life by the seasons. But it also seems perfectly natural. The changing seasons provide a backdrop to measure against, a change that prompts thinking about more and other changes.

Today the boys and I played in the yard. Eli is big enough to climb the small ladder to the playground; last year he more or less rode on our hips. Soren can swing under his own power, one of many things he can do on his own. Our boys are growing up. Eli, at two, parrots everything he hears in a lilting, sing-song voice. Soren, at five, questions everything. Both are learning to be independent, are already growing away from us, as they ought to.

Crows caw noisily from the red pines. Eli shoots back a perfect imitation that warms my heart. Last year at this time spring was a cruel joke; winter still held us fast and would not relent. At the cemetery where we buried my dad, the wind whipped the priest’s words away as soon as they left his mouth. The color guard blew a hurried taps and retreated to a van. Our own grief and solemnity was scuttled by the cold; we bobbed from left to right, drew inward, stomped feet, and fled to the cars the moment things ended.

For weeks afterward I felt that numbness, the cold having worked its way to my core.

This year, with my boys twirling in circles together, and falling in a heap in the brown grass, I can see that spring is the season of new life after all.