Hello everyone! The audio is a recording of the story below so please listen or read (or both) whichever is more appealing.
There were sparkles dancing in the air that morning. Tiny bits of frost carried in the fog, hitting the sunlight just right - or perhaps the sun was throwing glitter in the air just for her benefit. She watched how it appeared and disappeared depending on the background as she shifted her gaze. Had she seen glitter like this before? She could not remember.
On a branch across the cove sat a shadow. Almost eagle, not quite hawk and really not quite either, yet it had to be one or the other – right? An insistent heron made a flyby and the shadow took off. Not eagle, she thought, they don’t much care what the herons do. It was only later when she saw a bird sitting closer that she recognized what she had forgotten in the short months of winter – osprey.
On the cold, crisp breeze she heard a whistling, a clicking, a trill with a bit of an edge. “Doot-doot-do-do-do-do-do.” She saw two birds dart overhead and her brain searched to remember. Tree swallows? No, too dark. She knew that sound but she searched for the name. They landed to claim the housing that is maintained just for them in the marina and then she laughed with delight – the cheeky, noisy, boisterous, beautiful, flying purple bug-eaters were back! Purple martins.
Spring is a time of remembering she thought. Remembering the sounds, remembering the shapes, remembering the flight patterns and the mannerisms of all her feathered friends. Remembering the smell of musty mornings and damp earth. Remembering the feeling of warm sun on her skin.
As she watched a pair of eastern phoebes go back and forth from the dock to the grass, gathering materials and carefully constructing a nest in the rafters she thought about how easily she could forget the tail bobs and the sounds and the quick swoop they make to catch bugs in the air.
She thought about the strangeness of memory – of what we remember, of what we forget, of how we search the memory banks when sounds and sights and smells nudge us to say, “you know me. You do. Remember.” How a memory from fifty years ago can suddenly appear clear as day and a memory from last fall can be so hard to find. A blessing and a curse and either way, just the way things are.
As she watched the sparkles still dancing in the air she wondered when she had forgotten it was ok to delight in such simple things. She tried to remember a time before she thought she needed to be seen as smart or serious or “more grown-up” or whatever it was that sometimes kept her from sharing the joy she felt for ordinary magic.
What had all that seriousness ever gotten her really? She imagined smart and serious as a cloak she had forgotten she was wearing. She imagined taking it off, leaving it there on the dock. Walking away now free to listen to the sunlight sing, the water hum and the buds popping out of the branches.
She remembered singing silly songs to her small nieces and nephews. Building blanket forts and lego towers and reading “Are You My Mother” or “I Love You This Much” for the hundredth time. She remembered how terribly happy she was in those moments when she left the serious world behind.
She imagined a new way of being, a new cloak, this one lighter and much more colorful. Adorned with images of birds and leaves and feathers and ice crystals in rich shades of green, blue and gold. Perhaps it was time to be seen in a different light. Perhaps it was time to remember more parts of herself long forgotten.
What signs of spring - or fall! - are you seeing? What are you remembering?
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