Tulips

The first day of spring arrived with grey skies and freezing rain. 

Seems about right, said the pessimist voice that is an easy default for my psyche. But the optimist voice, which is stubbornly cheerful when caffeinated (as was the case), saw something different. 

The early morning ice build-up outlined the branches of the large maple tree outside the window of my home office. Tiny icicles clung to the bumps of what will soon be buds. As the day moved on and temperature warmed, fat water droplets grew heavy before they let go of the branch and fell to the wet ground below. Beautifully distracting.

Beyond the tree, the thick, black hydro wires looked like a neat laundry line for perfectly placed petite icicles. The cars in the neighbourhood were pebbled with ice; their windshields looked greenish in the daylight. 

It was the kind of morning where you needed a lamp to do any task, but it was bright enough that you didn’t want to punctuate the peace with light bulbs. I like grey, moody days for working, with the right music filling the space with melody. The room feels still, settled, focused. 

I should have had every light on in the room, the ceiling light, the tall stand lighting, but that morning, a desk lamp was all I needed to cast a yellow hue on the spot where pen meets paper, because I still love the scrape of a pen on the lined page. 

The glow of the computer screens around me, necessary for my morning work, are set to dark mode to mute the glare. Lighting is important, but natural light is everything.

As the morning moved into midday, and the freezing rain turned to steady cold rain, the temperature settled to a high of around 5C. The ragged line of ice on the windshield of my car slid unequally down to the wipers. Still going to have to scrape it, the pessimist said. But at least I don’t have to shovel the rain, the optimist replied.

This is the point of the day where I switch from working solo at home to working amongst people in an office. Gathering my belongings to head out, my keys were on the table next to a rare piece of decor: a glass vase holding a bouquet of white tulips, early in their bloom, surrounded by dark green leaves, the whole bunch leaning to one side of the opening of the vase as if they too could feel the weight of a winter that felt heavier than past years for reasons too many to name. A metaphor on many levels.

I say rare decor because having living flowers in delicate vases doesn’t happen often in this house. The tulips were bought a week ago to decorate the dinner table for a casual dinner with my parents. I’d asked the Carpenter to buy flowers to make a centrepiece for the table. He obliged, but remarked that it seemed like an unnecessary expense for a Saturday night pot roast meal. The pessimist agreed. The optimist said to do it anyway.

Almost a week later, on that first day of spring, the tulips were blooming. The white petals, or tepals, were a beautiful contrast to the grey day. Before we know it, tulips will sprout up all over town. 

Too bad the squirrels dug ours up, the pessimist said. Shut up, the optimist replied, politely.

Welcome spring.

You’ve been missed. 

Brighter days ahead.