Where is Spring?

Spring arrived over a month ago, but somebody did not get the memo.  This morning I walked outside with my coffee and found I needed my signature fingerless gloves even with the warmth of the mug. By the way, these are great for casual gardening, you  know, for those occasions when you just want to pull out a tiny pokeweed or discourage a buttercup blooming in the larkspur bed.  The bare ends of a thumb and forefinger will do the job while the rest of the hand stays cozy.  Ask Lisa, she finagles a new pair of these from my knitting needles every Christmas.

I’m saying, “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry!” to the potted bougainvillea I set outside one day when the temperature was maliciously and deceptively 85 degrees.  Wintry weather came back with a vengeance.  This morning, the plant is back in a sunny window, wind-whipped, chilled to the bone, and sad.

But one nice thing about the cold:  my lilies-of-the-valley are lingering as if in a florist’s refrigerator, all perfume and porcelain bells.  They are as beautiful as when my grandmother planted them here.  I never knew Irene, but I know her beautiful flowers.  They come back each year like a seal of approval on our family for taking care of the house her husband built for her.

 One year the tiny lily bells grew in such abundant waves that the German neighbor across the street could smell the perfume on the breeze.  It made her nostalgic for her young days on the continent.

 Another year, on the first day of May, as they do in France, I took a small bouquet of the flowers to Lili, the appropriately-named French exchange student attending Warwick High School where I was teaching.  Les muguets brought tears to her eyes.

When my sister got married in 1969, on the third of May, she wanted her wedding cake decorated with fresh lily-of-the-valley blossoms.  So that the bride could have her way, the family ignored the caution that lilies-of-the-valley are poisonous and somehow survived the experience, as did Lynda Bird Johnson, the president’s daughter, who got married the same year and whose no-doubt-much-larger wedding cake was decorated with the very same fragrant snowy bells.

Whatever is in our hearts, even this wintry spring, we’re saying it with flowers.