Desperately seeking spring

What happened to spring? Minnesotans want to know, and you can't really blame us.

The photos on this page were taken on March 24 last year. Thanks to a record-setting warm March, crocuses and bleeding hearts were emerging by St. Patrick's Day and azaleas were leafing out with abandon. By contrast, March 2013 has been colder than normal. We still have snow on the roof, a foot or two of gritty snow slowly melting all across the yard, and absolutely no signs of emerging plant life.

Minnesotans don't expect great weather to last, or to repeat itself. A typical reaction to a mild winter: "We'll pay the price next year." Still, life conspires to get our hopes up about spring. For starters, it seems that we naturally crave spring's promise of warmth, new beginnings, the upswing in the cycle of life. But there are plenty of other prompts.

Let's start with Punxatawney Phil and those old guys in top hats who speak of six more weeks of winter as if that were a worst-case scenario. We know better than to believe such a thing (2012 notwithstanding), but the annual Groundhog's Day chatter gets us thinking spring months too early.

The beginning of Daylight Savings Time seems another harbinger of spring. Frankly, it's always a pleasant surprise, in those those first few days after turning our clocks ahead, to find that it's still light at 5:30 p.m. It reminds us of the promise of our long summer evenings, when it stays light until 9:30. But those evenings are still far off...and more so since DST begins weeks earlier than it used to.

Then there's the official "first day of spring," the vernal equinox. I seem to recall that it was snowing and about 20 degrees this year.

Growing up, I always equated Easter with spring, and with wearing a spring outfit to church. Year after year, I had to cover my new pink dress with my winter coat, and leave the cute straw hat at home. This year we've been told to expect snow flurries Saturday night, and Sunday highs in the 30s with gusty winds.

Okay, so none of those events can be counted on to get spring underway. Certainly the opening day of major league baseball will do it, no? No. The Minnesota Twins are due to play their opener at home, in an open-air stadium, with a predicted high of 33 degrees and continued strong winds. Brrr.

So with promises and false hopes all around us, there's nothing to do but create spring for ourselves. Starting with a springtime header made up of last year's photos. 

***

Meanwhile, speaking of Easter, I'm hooked on the annual St. Paul Pioneer Press Peeps contest, which draws an amazing array of creative and elaborate entries. Entering is on my bucket list.

This year, just for fun, I invited ViMae to create a scene with me. She came up with a Christmas wedding, prompted by a scrap of wrapping paper we used for a carpet. The wedding party is entering as couples, plus one tiny flower girl. The bride and her attendants carry red roses and the groom wears a red boutonniere. I'm kinda hoping this is the start of a winning tradition.

Own your age...you worked hard for it!

World's greatest gift bag...

I'm two weeks into Being Seventy. Turns out that once I got used to the sound of it, things are not all that different from being 69, or even 68.

This past weekend I heard an NPR interview with Philip Roth, in which they implied that it was surprising that he continued to turn out novels in his 70s. He said he hadn't seen any reason to stop. His statement, as I recall, was, "I still had energy, and nothing had changed. I was eating the same breakfast cereal." Roth turned 80 last week, and he said he has slowed down. He naps every day--after he goes for a long swim.

This brings us to one thing I've learned lately. If you want to be healthy and active at 70 or 80, you'd better start working on it a lot earlier. Had I been strength training in my 50s, I probably wouldn't have fallen three times in my 60s. Had I built and sustained my stamina, I might have recovered more readily when I did break my leg. Surely it would have been easier to return to the fun activities that keep us healthy and alive.

But I'm not dwelling on that. I'm doing my tap routines several times a week, and I'm gently stretching for flexibility. I found my dumbbells, and I'm setting up a schedule. I will walk outdoors in a week or two, when the dratted ice melts from our treacherous sidewalks. In another month I should be able to work in the garden, or at least at its edges--always a favorite workout. We are seeing the sun for more hours in the day, and on those days when it chooses to shine, I salute and celebrate it.

and gifts that go with Being Hot. :)

Here's something else I've learned. If you are dreading a birthday, celebrate the heck out of it. Get your friends and family together, maybe several times over the course of a week, talk about life (the good, the bad, and the ugly), and see if you don't find yourself celebrating who you are. Part of that, of course, is being whatever age you are. The sooner you own it, the happier you'll be.

I can tell from your blog posts that most of my readers already knew that. I did, too, but aging brings all kinds of changes and I suspect some of them will be equally hard to embrace. As the saying goes, growing old is not for cowards!


P.S. The gift bag plays "Ring of Fire" when you open it. The perfect gift from my brother Al and sister-in-law Lynn!

Welcoming the unwelcome birthday

The birthday I've been dreading for more than a year is upon me. Today--Monday, March 11, 2013--I am 70. I think I'm finally okay with it.

All my adult life, people have told me I look younger than my age. Most of the time I have felt younger, too.

But this year some things have happened that tell me if I want to be a youthful and vigorous 70 I'd better make a few changes.

In June I broke my leg and badly sprained my ankle. I hobbled around on it for 10 days before finally going to a doctor, who put on a giant splint and ordered me to stay off the leg for six weeks. It didn't occur to me that I should have been exercising the rest of my body. Taking advantage of my inactivity, some old fibromyalgia pains flared up. Then I developed shingles--the mildest case imaginable, but even without severe pain it meant there was an active virus in my system.

I spent most of August exercising my legs and ankles and enjoying being active again. When the kids returned for daycare at the end of the month, I was mostly up to the task.

A week or so later, Augie started all-day kindergarten. He spends about 90 minutes with us in the morning playing and having breakfast, and then Peter takes him to school. Without Augie's driving energy ("C'mon Grandma, let's race around the house"), Vi and I settled into a routine of reading, crafting, playing Dragonvale on the iPad, etc. I began to marvel at her newly extended attention span, failing to notice how very sedentary we'd become.

I wrote on January 6 that I'd realized that I lacked energy and stamina, and that after Vi left each day I was resorting to chocolate and naps and ignoring my to-do lists. I made a New Year's resolution to be more active and to eat more wisely. But days later the flu hit me. I was sick for weeks and couldn't bounce back.  I wasn't going to be fitter and more energetic in time for my birthday, as I'd intended. I felt old.

I visited my doctor a couple of weeks ago. She said the flu was affecting lots of people the same way and she didn't find anything wrong health-wise. She was upbeat about my situation but matter-of-factly used the term "de-conditioned," which I found oddly appropriate. She agreed that rebuilding my activity level was a key to feeling better and sustaining good health.

I told her something I haven't yet told you: I began taking tap dancing lessons in early January. I missed a couple because of the flu, and the eight-week class is over now, but I've learned enough to put together a good workout several days a week at home until a new class begins. I love it, and it's one of a small handful of things making me feel better.

Friday my siblings and their families threw a birthday party for me, one of the best gatherings we've had in a long time. My sister flew in from California as a surprise, and she's in town for a few more days. Saturday Peter and I had a fabulous lunch at a favorite restaurant, followed by still-wonderful leftovers for dinner. Sunday we had comfort food with my sister, and tonight we'll have dinner with the grandkids and their parents. We are celebrating my turning 70, and in the process I am reminding myself to be grateful for the privilege. I even bought myself a refill for my planner so I can get back to scheduling and tracking my projects.

Life is a gift. I know how to make the most of it. I just got out of the habit for a while.

Poetry in Motion

Blog friend Teresa Evangeline often posts poetry that really moves me. Through her I learned of Mary Oliver, whose luminous poems tend to delve beneath the surface of the natural world and find the beauty not only in appearance but in function.

A few weeks ago I bought a book of Mary Oliver poems for myself, a small collection published in 2004 called "Why I Wake Early." The title is for me either ironic or aspirational, since I have never been an early riser. Still, I recognize that nature is often at its best in early morning, and that I am looking for new sources of positive energy, so this book seemed promising.

The poems are lovely, and I will post the first one, which has given the book its title. If you decide to skip over the poem (gasp!), there is more to my story after the poem.

Why I Wake Early

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety--

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light--
good morning, good morning, good morniing.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

--Mary Oliver

I decided to read this poem to 4-year-old granddaughter ViMae, just to see how she would respond. She liked the idea of saying hello to the sun, and she agreed that it reaches out and warms you whether you are cheerful or, as the poem says, crotchety.

At that moment, before I could get back to reading, she took a flight of fancy, pulling the sun into her own life. It was just a couple of sentences, but it struck me, instantly, as a vibrant response to this poem I was sharing with her. She didn't really mean it as a poem; she told me later it was a real plan and she's really going to do it (she's also really going to have a pet dragon). But she agreed that I could write down what she had said and share it on my blog. She helped choose the photo and fix the layout, and I hit "publish." You can read it here.

But I left out the context. I loved the fact that ViMae responded to a poem by imagining an action, and even planning for a soft landing. I'm glad I wrote it down. As I continue to read and reread these poems, I'm going to be less satisfied with a cerebral response. I'm going to set my imagination to the task of bringing the poem to life...to my life.

You can learn a lot from children.