Spring Fever and Reminiscence

What a difference a couple of days makes! Look at my view from the deck this morning. One will note that the palm fronds are not a blur because they are not snapping like bullwhips in the wind. Oh, to be sure, we are not out of the woods yet. Tomorrow promises to be as schizophrenic as Wednesday. But Sunday we spring forward to Daylight Savings Time and when I stepped out onto the deck to snap that picture, the sun felt warm on my shoulders.

I read the most informative springtime post this morning that truly put some things into perspective for me. It helped curb some angst and unease. The post features lovely photos of calla lilies, and some of the commenters [poetic sorts and flower lovers, all] wrote that they didn't know those blooms could be found in particular colors. Perhaps pushed on by a large dose of spring fever, I drifted into reverie.

My mother went to high school with a friend named Barbara. Barbara was an only child and my mother loved going to her quiet, orderly home. Barbara loved visiting in my mother's home with all the rollicking, frolicking redheaded Irish Americans who are my ancestors. When my parents "ran off" to get married, Barbara went along as my mother's maid of honor. She did not have children until much later in her life than my mother had me, so for much of my early life, I was "Barbara's girl". Her family remained involved with ours for many, many years. The first wedding gift Ex and I received was from Barbara's elderly parents.

Barbara married Jack, a policeman, and began an early married life of leisure. She was more adventuresome and worldly than my mother, driving her own car to meet girlfriends for lunch, joining the garden club, taking classes, decorating her home beautifully. Barbara was big copy in our home! We thought she was wonderful in every way.

Easter was approaching when Barbara called to say, "Let's do a project!" It was arranged that she would drive to our home on a weekday afternoon, bringing all the supplies needed for said project and we'd all participate, even young Leslie. I remember being excited and intrigued, for my mother did not arrange projects. Nor Granny, nor anyone else I knew. I'd probably never heard the word spoken. But my mother smiled and bustled around and made potato salad for our lunch, so I knew this project was a good thing and not a bad one.

Barbara arrived with armloads - literally - of calla lilies of the commonest variety, the white with the yellow tongue. She brought sandpaper and bags of cotton balls and buckets of colored chalk sticks of the sort little girls use to draw hopscotch grids . And although it has been 53 springs since, I have never forgotten the afternoon spent on that project. Barbara had taken a class where she learned how to do this activity. One used the sandpaper to reduce the chalk to powder. A cotton ball was dipped into the powder and then used to sweep color onto the white lily petals. We made pink lilies and red, blue and lavender. On some petals we made a marbled effect, using a bit of color offset by the flower's own white. My father is a bit clever, a bit different. When he arrived home, the rainbow lily was invented, and we all bowed to his creativity.



It came time for Barbara to go home and make dinner for Jack. She left us with the lion's share of the colored lilies so we could share with Granny and put some on the altar at Mass for Easter. Our small home was filled with the fragrance of lilies (yes, I know some people find that cloying, but I love it). Even I, a young child, could see that the wool rug was covered with chalk dust and I looked like I had just emerged from a colored chalk mine. But this was an enchanted spring because my mother did not have a nervous breakdown over the mess. My father pitched in to help clean it up. I was pitched into the bathtub, and this remains a memory of a very special time to me. I have continued a lifetime of projects, perhaps stemming from that spring afternoon in 1956.

In my ears right now: Some music from the year I was 15. It was a joyous and devastating year and soon I shall be writing about it. This ditty did not age well, but I've never forgotten it.

Something that charmed me: Bloomsbury and Benson charm me this morning. They converse with the outside birds so loudly, I can barely think.