Retirement Day #1321
The morning breeze chilled the dank woods where melting snow darkened the tree trunks to black. A keenness defined the shadows; pungent scents timidly wisped from the muddy, moldering leaves under my muck boots. Everything seemed dead- but the woods merely dozed. The angle of this morning sun had changed
Spring
All my life, late winter into spring was my crazy-busy season. In childhood, my patient mother shuttled me from one rehearsal to the next for after school band competitions, spring dance recitals & musical productions. As a young adult, spring productions became professional ventures. When I joined the Hope College dance faculty, I was contracted to create 2 original works for - you-guessed it - the annual spring dance concert. Once we had more faculty, I shifted to creating one, but continued to carry the role of production coordinator.
So, every spring I missed the emergence of this glorious season. Right after the holidays, in the dead of winter, I walked into a cinder-block building [school/studio/theater] and emerged in late April to a world transformed from white to green. I dearly love to choreograph, but I always felt like I missed a bigger dance.
The first time I had no cinder-block obligations was when covid shut down everything in 2020; we stumbled through that spring in a fog of shock & technology. The following 2 years I was happy to be choreographing. This spring, perhaps for the first time in my life, I have no cinder-block obligations.
Spring literally SPRINGS a new world overnight, when a warm southwestern breeze invites the spring beauties, crocuses, daffodils, dutchman’s breeches, violets, trillium - those modest, brave, deep woods flowers- to make the first stand against late winter snowfalls. The scent of soil, storm, and green rises like a morning fog, then poof! Leaves! Bebes!
Spring knows no clock or obligation - like all of Nature’s truths, it arrives when it arrives.
This year I put my human clock aside and am sitting back to float with Nature.
Let the Dance begin.