The Softening

What I have always found fascinating about weather in Vermont is how, after only a lifetime here, I am able to detect the arrival of a new season without the benefit of a calendar.

March arrived in full lion-glory, a snow storm with wind creating mini tornadoes chasing each other across our road. On the evening walk to the barn my boots creak and, on intake, my breath stings at the back of my throat and creates icy clouds that I blow out to join the ones drifting past the moon. Chickens cluck quietly as I open both coops, their bodies hunched over their ragged, wintered claws: their long, pointed nails looking unpainted and unkempt.

Paul and I burrow under our woolen blanket. Nested in flannel sheets, only the tops of our heads are visible. Our sleep is the torpor of hibernating beasts.

We spend Saturday afternoon at the garden shop. Walking in we smell earth, life. Green cascades are everywhere, made almost tropical by the sound of water falling into stone fountains. We spend time reading the back of seed packets; tomatoes, onions, herbs and, for fun, giant pumpkin seeds. Vermont’s summers are notoriously short so the main qualification for purchase being length of growing time. We tick off things we’ll need to begin plants under our grow lights: the kitchen to become our makeshift garden plot. Each evening will be lit by the eerie, extra-terrestrial, bulbs. We stroll around the large selection of house plants and I hear one call out to me. Tiny round leaves spill, a necklace on a delicate chain, out of the small hanging pot. Paul reminds me that we have no room for more plants. There is always “up” isn’t there? We leave the store with a fistful of seed packs and a new baby with iron hanger swaddled in brown paper.

We watch out the window while fat snowflakes swirl down, sometimes so thick that we cannot see the road. Paul comes in with an armload of wood and we build a fire in the fireplace to eat dinner in front of. No seeing the snow now for the inky darkness. As we settle into evening, I feel peace.

We wake up with sunlight coming in through the blinds. The temperature rises with the sun. I stand on top of a snowbank and hear chickadees clicking and flitting about. I’m delighted with sound. We have spent many months in white silence.

A few days of sunshine and our dirt road begins to soften under our tires and mud boots. Icicles hang along our roof line like pointed teeth, and I listen for the “plop” of them dripping. Our sheep lay on beds of straw in the winter paddock and close their eyes, ruminating, enjoying the warmth. I pull om my snowshoes and walk down the road to our pasture to check bees. I carefully lift the lid of a hive and see bees lazily climbing up through the frames looking for spring feed, their honey stores beginning to wane. Watching, I see a few make a wobbly lift-off to find a good place to use the bathroom.

After finishing working with youth orchestra on Saturday morning we find two stools in the window at the bakery. Watching the world go by we bite into a flaky pastry filled with cheese and chives. People everywhere, laughing with friends, walking dogs, clutching shopping bags. We are the bears rising from hibernation to feed on baked goods and tea. There are those who remain bundled in winter clothing, their blood not quite thawed. Others wear shorts and t-shirts, anxious to squeeze every moment out of this brief reprieve.

Slowly maneuvering the muddy ruts on our drive home, I see Jason splitting wood for maple sugaring while daughter Morgan swoops out over the melting snow on her rope swing. Molly waves both her and the tiny mittened hands of her new baby as they walk. Donald, almost one hundred years old, sits atop his green John Deere and uses the bucket to push the snow to one side, an action that feels metaphoric as well as physical.

We park in our muddied driveway and step into the early spring sunshine. Pausing to inhale the smell of the earth we come from and listen to the happy calls of the birds scratching at bare spots left by the retreating snow.

I lift my arms and stretch my wintered body feeling the returning warmth of the sunshine deep in my bones. I. like the dirt roads, feel the months of ice rising up and leaving me. Hope finding its way again and I too begin to soften.