The First Day of Spring

…and the third Sunday in Lent. Yesterday, the winter went out quite lion-like with gusty winds preventing us from describing the day as “warm.” The temperature was in fact nice, but we had to bundle into jackets as we sat with the dogs on the back porch in the afternoon, talking in our quiet Orr voices and watching the greening of our acres in this warming half of the world, the day, the so very awake day rushing along with the urgency of a waterfall, even an unseen waterfall.

Things are warming, but I was also chilled by something I encountered while we were out shopping for supplies yesterday. I was going to pick up a sack of black oil sunflower seeds for the bird feeders, but I saw that the price has almost tripled…it’s up to 40 bucks for a 40-lb bag. A dollar for a pound of sunflower seeds…this is the truth of this America. I said to Mrs. Orr, “I hope the birds will forgive me, but we can’t afford to feed them during the warm months.” She agreed. Right now and on into the summer, they should have plenty to forage on in the natural world. After all, Christ observed that our Father feeds the winged ones. Perhaps I will stockpile a few bags of sunflower seeds for the winter and then feed my babies occasionally when the cold is particularly bitter or when snow and ice hide what provender is still there. I will miss their constant presence at the feeders out front and out back, but 40 bucks is 40 bucks.

It did occur to me yesterday while we were sitting outside that every year, at least three or four sunflowers spring up volunteer as a result of seeds that get spilled and then pushed down into the earth. I infer from this that the seeds I feed the birds will germinate. I suppose I could take some of the seed I have remaining and plant a patch of sunflowers for the birds to have as their grocery store late in the season. Mrs. Orr is going to help me try to start a few seedlings to see if this is practical.

***

We started this day like we start many Sundays…enjoying coffee and watching an old movie. Today it was Good-bye, My Lady, with Brandon DeWilde and Walter Brennan. I read the book when I was a boy and loved it. Like Rawlings’ The Yearling, the story of a lonely boy and his bond with an animal rang painful and true with me, and I have never forgotten it. That reminds me…my dear friend Roger Hathaway gave me a copy of a book I loved dearly as a boy, The Voice of Bugle Ann. He remembered me mentioning it once in a conversation and obtained it for me. The gesture meant so much to me. I need to get the book from the shelf and re-read it.

***

I was speaking to an elderly man the other day on the phone. Our conversation was interrupted by a blare of noise that I recognized as some variety of rap or hip-hop music. The old gent said, “‘Scuse me,” and then moved the phone away from his mouth. I heard him say, “Marcus? MARCUS!”

A muffled voice replied to him. “Whut?”

“Honey, can you turn that down?

“Whut?”

“Keep that music down, honey. I’m on the phone.”

“I didn’t know you’s on the phone.” And the music was turned down low.

The old fellow returned to the call. “Now where were we…?”

Later, I kept thinking of the conversation. The boy who had been blasting the music had said he was unaware that the old man was on the phone. But what difference does that make? I kept thinking. On the phone or not, the old man should not ever have to endure that kind of obscene noise. The boy should never be polluting his elder’s home with such trash.

And the old man should not have spoken with such deference to that child of destruction.

***

The bluebonnets are peaking in Texas right now, and Mrs. Orr has been torturing herself by looking at photos of them. Our desire to return to Texas comes in cycles, and right now, it is as strong and hot as a branding iron laid into a longhorn’s flank. This place where we live is one of the prettiest I’ve ever seen, as pretty as the Scottish Highlands. But it ain’t Texas, and the people ain’t Texans, and it is for sure that Texas is a whole ‘nother country, as they say. Lord knows my arthritis could use some year-round Texas climate.

***

The March wind was insistent today, as annoying as a three year-old, preventing either of us from ever really sinking into the bound pages we held in our married hands beneath God’s good sun. It was a day, a day, a mad dash of a lopping and pruning day, the chainsaw numbing my hands as I made my music and laid waste to the intrusive forsythia that has taken over what was once a run where hens scrambled and took dust baths and caught grasshoppers and waited for their mealworms with buckshot eyes and side-to-side gaits, coming to me to rest their combed heads against my leg and snuggling against my flannel chest when I picked one up and gave it my tall attention, my giant’s affection, my loud and foreign ministrations.

And now my feet hurt, and A River Runs Through It is playing in the background, and I’m so grateful that Robert Redford fired Elmer Bernstein and hired the remarkable Mark Isham to score the film. And my hands throb and my ambition will always outstrip my stamina and abilities, but soft steak tacos and refried black beans — yes,  refried black beans — are on the table tonight, and the dogs are sun-sated and exhausted, and Christ keeps whispering at me, but I am mistrustful, and the Maid of Orleans places her tiny, white, and innocent hand on my shoulder and drums her French fingers there, stilling me and focusing my blood down into a slow, reverent trickle.  Night comes later, but there are long stretches of holy darkness within and without, and I can breathe within their springtime span.

~ S.K. Orr