jumpingfish

So let’s talk about those wild Primroses in the front yard…

Many springs ago, my mother came down from the north to visit and to revel in the warm Texas springtime. It was a good year for it, to the extent I can remember it: the sun shined, the sky was blue, the wild flowers were blooming, that sort of thing, I suppose. 

And one day, she and the fair and industrious Trudy ventured out to the Wildflower Research Center that was having their annual spring wildflower sale. And they came home with hands full of four inch pots with greenery and promises of color.

My mother handed me one. For my birthday, I think it was. A salvia of some sort the label said, which I poo-poo’d, because from the look of the leaves it was clearly not a salvia. And I thought to myself (and probably let show on my face) that I thought this was a mislabeled volunteer of some sort. Still, we planted it in the front, in the bed beneath the Monterey Oak and wished the little orphan well.

fast forward…

It was indeed no sort of salvia. It was a primrose of some kind. Not the pink or yellow evening varieties that bloom this time of year, rather it was some wild thing that grew legs over the years and crept gradually to the south, following puddles of sun admitted by the overhanging oak.

And every year, without fail this wild kind of Primrose has raised up out of the leaf litter about this time of year and stretched out its lanky arms and raised its pale pink blossoms that open in the morning and track the sun as it arcs across the sky and close as it sets in the west. Blossoms that open the next day and the next about this time of year and whisper that message from my mother on that spring day back then: Happy Birthday.

Thanks, mom. It was the perfect wild thing.

So they came into town, my family did. My aunt. My brother and sister-in-law. My niece from Berkeley. My other niece soon to be (perhaps) from Austin. My nephew. And my mother.

They came to town as the weather was oscillating wildly between warm, spring, sunshiny days and cold and dreary. Except the Berkeley niece, they came fleeing freezing cold and snow. They came expecting sun and blue skies and spring flowers. The came expecting March to be going out like a lamb.

But although the weather here was far better than there, there and there, it was by no means accommodating. There was wind and drizzle, and the skies were an uninviting grey, a drag to us as hosts, although we tried to conceal our disappointment as our visitors were likely were quite happy with the transitions they made.

The several days flew past. And the visitors left town, flight by flight, returning to Illinois and Ohio and New York, returning to the weather they had fled.

And the following day, the very next day, the sun reappeared and temperatures climbed into the 70s. And after that with the temperature in the mid 80s, we found ourselves rolling down the car windows to get a break from the heat.

And on that day, the Irises, many of which had succumbed to the first freeze several weeks ago (the same freeze that killed the tomatoes and the buds on the Spiderwort and on the Pomegranate and Ash trees)… On that day so soon after the visitors had gone, the Irises and Blue Bonnets and Englemann’s Daisies and Prairie Verbena and various wild, flowering weedy things exploded.

Missed it by that much.

I don’t know.

The weather is gray and blustery. The family has come and gone in a whirlwind (literally when it comes to the frisbees that were flying on Sunday). The dogs are looking at me like there ought to be dinner served up about now and why on earth am I sitting here staring at that infernal thing on the desk and holding that stick in my hand when there is dinner to be served, for heavens sake?

So I don’t know what it means. Heck I only have a vague idea what to call it. So without further ado, here it is.

And now… Dinner is served!

She sometimes talks about volcanology with a hint of lament in her voice. What her plans were. What might have otherwise been. I sometimes think about otherwise, too. With a hint of lament. What might have been but isn’t. Plans gone by.

But she didn’t do that. And I didn’t do those.

Instead, we met outside a restaurant that is no longer there, she walking with a confident swagger that spoke of the volcanologist in her. With a smile on her face and a glint in her eyes.

And it makes me glad for the this. For the what did. For the what is. With no hint of regret.

On a cold, cloudy day. With wishes that winter be gone.

Oh certainly these aren’t the trees we’d be wishing for. And the sun-baked sand brings problems of its own. But how about green things sprouting up and sun shining down and white clouds going by? How about that?