White Witch Snapped Like Dirty Laundry

Spring makes me want to gather up my house in my arms. Ah, it's laundry day for the house once again. I'll take the house to the back stoop and snap it out in the bright spring sunshine. The house crevices, hiding a season's worth of cracker crumbs, mouse droppings, layers of winter dust, toddler germs--all will be shaken clean! Begone, nasty old winter! And then I'll fold up the house like a bright white sheet, a crisp fresh tablecloth, and bring it indoors again. White Witch has been banished into a dark corner of the world. Her strength is broken, her mind awhirl with "might-have-beens."

Okay, winter wasn't that bad. All the same I am grateful for the thaw, for the little spiky heads of the crocus bulbs, for my neighbor who I haven't seen in six months. She finally ventured out with her little dog, fingers clasped around a cup of hot tea, to survey her yard. We were such good friends last summer. Perhaps we will be good friends again as temperatures rise.

Wazoo Farm looks rumpled and soggy. It has been sleeping for a long time. There are signs of wakefulness, though--a dead robin under a barelimbed bush, small deposits of deer droppings, fledgling stinging nettles in the grass. Yes, it's not the most giddy picture of spring, but it's spring nonetheless.

Today at lunch Merry said:
I heard at the beginning of Cinderella an ad that said, Who Will Save the World? [She paused, puzzled, then continued:] The WORLD doesn't need saving, Mommy. PEOPLE need saving.

The old Bible verse I've known since I was two began climbing its way hand over fist up my throat and onto my tongue. But I didn't say it. So, look you here: the world is saved, in a timeless kind of way. Yes, the world is mixed up with the confused intentions of people. (There is early tender spring and a rotting dead robin.) There is war, the product of confused and lonely people.

But then, the world is lovely, is breathtaking, as gentle and cool as the last sliver of ice melting into my garden soil.

Hurrah for spring.