New Life

On my way to school today, cranky that it is STILL RAINING I was thinking that I would be so much happier if the d@&# sun would consent to paying us a little visit . . . maybe just a little glimmer would do. Still kvetching about the stupid weather and the work that is on my desk to the unsuspecting colleague who happened to make the mistake of saying good morning, my phone rang. A bit surprised to get a call at 6:55 am (only crazy people like high school teachers and students in my district are alive at this time) I said hello to hear a tentative, sleepy, and slightly scared "Coach?" on the other end. The dear voice on the other end was that of a former student and basketball player of mine and my husbands' who has become like a daughter to us. She was calling from the hospital where she has been in labor for nearing 15 hours. She wanted to check-in and let us know that she was there, all is okay (relatively speaking when one has been in labor for 15 hours!!), and that her husband is taking great care of her. And instantly everything changed. Life was again good when the hope and promise of new life is so deliciously near. And the obnoxious cliche of the rain before the flowers, the pain before the birth came tumbling down on me and I laughed at myself and the rightness of it all. Now if someone could just come and take the work off of my desk . . .

April is the Cruelest Month

Each year as the mud begins to thaw, the wind howls and the forsythia fights through, I can't help but think how true indeed is T.S. Eliot's line from The Wasteland, but first  I suppose a little admission is in order here. I don't really like Spring. I know-- I must be broken. I can remember being a small child excited to wake up and see what the Easter Bunny brought me, but yet I always had this feeling that something about the Easter basket and the neon-bright smooth plastic eggs was just, somehow, too much. I could never put words to it of course, and even in my little short brown-haired head I knew that if I tried to explain my distaste for disturbingly large bunnies and too happy unnaturally-colored silicon grass that somehow I would be wierd. Because, being from the Midwest, the party line that begins almost as soon as the Christmas manager is put away goes something like, "Gosh, I just can't wait for Spring," or "Man, it's been a rough one here--just can't wait for the weather to get warmer," or "Won't it be soo nice when we can go outside without all these winter coats, hats, gloves, scarves, boots . . ." Now, don't get me wrong, I love a 60 degree day as much as the next person, but there is something more deeply disturbing about Spring to me than the warmer weather and some tacky holiday paraphernalia. It is, I have found, the "waking" of new life, the the grunting and groaning of the Earth to come back to life that pulls at me, gets in my face and demands something from me that just sometimes seems as I have said before, "too much." I do realize that I am still most likely in the minority with this feeling--as I much prefer, indeed, LOVE the fall with its harvesting, rather than birthing, but about six years ago I heard something very disturbing that unfortunately for the context, opened a window to helping me to see that I'm not the only one who welcomes Spring with an odd sense of dread. I was at a teacher workshop and the presenter was working with us on the mental health of teenagers. She slipped into her presentation an almost off-handed comment that most teen suicides happen in the Spring. My stomach turned-over when she said this--not because I was or am suicidal, but because I instantly felt like I "knew" why this horrible fact might be so. She corroborated my instinct when she went on to say that this is the case because teen depression stays in hibernation during the winter months but the "energy" that come with Spring motivates teens to "act" on their depression. It wasn't a few weeks later when I stumbled back upon Eliot's famous line, and wham! I knew that I was, for better or worse, not alone in my feeling that April is indeed the cruelest month. Relating all of this to my sister while putting up Easter decorations for my family, big sis laughed at me and said that I should be a Minnesota Lutheran. She may be right.