People in Minnesota and like climes are getting antsy for spring. I saw several people carrying bouquets of tulips over the weekend. No doubt they were bringing some signs of this longed for season into their homes to add color and promise. I also noticed that many of the conversations I had over the last several days somehow meandered their way to spring topics…..gardening, Easter, baseball. Even the birds can now be heard trying to usher winter out the door, throwing out their welcome mat of music.

We have planted several things indoors that are helping us gauge the coming of spring. We have a long silver planter filled with herb seeds beginning to show their lovely little, yellow green heads. We have another pot filled with paper whites reaching toward the brilliant February sunshine flowing through the window, reflecting off the still white ground.And on our kitchen table is the creme de la creme….an amaryllis bulb as big as a softball digging its roots into the dirt. Planted sometime last week it is now making a show of itself, green shoot pushing out of the gnarly bulb at what seems like an inch an hour. It is growing so quickly, it seems as if we could almost watch it, catch it in its upward movement toward becoming beautiful. 

These are the little tricks we winter people allow ourselves so we can hold onto hope, so we can remember what growth feels like, looks like. I recommend it. By the time spring actually arrives, which will be much longer than we'd like given March is our snowiest month, there will be the delicate flowers of paper-whites blooming in the family room. And if the amaryllis continues at the speed and power it has shown so far, our kitchen will be flooded with a flower the size of a dinner plate. These little signs of growth will carry us through the days when the melting snow will turn even dirtier as it reveals all kinds of hidden objects caught off guard by the falling snows of October. 

Over the weekend, our opossum returned to the backyard. This time I wasn't even concerned. I just smiled at his seeming eagerness for spring as well. He loped around the backyard looking not quite so confused, more awake, as he munched on some stray birdseed. The squirrels didn't even give him so much as a look. Perhaps we are all just getting used to one another, waiting for winter to be finished with us.

Spring is not here yet but we are having glimpses and that can make all the difference. On Sunday at church someone requested the lovely song by Natalie Sleeth, "Hymn of Promise". We began our singing clothed in the grays, browns and blacks of our winter state of mind. Our voices joined together: "In the bulb there is a flower, in the seed an apple tree; in cocoons, a hidden promise: butterflies will soon be free! In the cold and snow of winter there's a spring that waits to be, unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see."  When we finished singing, our cheeks were rosy with the promise of what is to come.

This spring we long for will be revealed in its own time, like all good gifts. Our work these days is to wait……and watch. And not get too antsy.