Rite of Spring

We’re back at the beach for the second time in three weeks. We had planned to finish house cleaning and pre-season chores in early April, but that’s when one of our dogs has to have ACL surgery, as a result of over-exuberant squirrel chasing.

We clean the oven and coffeemaker and power wash the deck furniture. We wipe the light fixtures and ceiling fans, vacuum underneath couch cushions and wash windows. A man comes to install impossibly green squares of sod on the part of our lawn that never grows anything more than moss. A kind neighbor will monitor the sprinkler timers to sustain this instant lawn while we are not here.

Readying this home for the vacations of others is our rite of spring, and the physical effort required distracts from all that is so utterly wrong in the world. Lies, ugliness, and cruelty bombard us at every turn. Elected representatives cower in fear as they hem and haw in front of microphones and make excuses for what in past years would have outraged us all and been grounds for swift criminal prosecution of the individuals responsible for this madness. Perhaps what is most heartbreaking is that none of this would be happening were it not for the choices made by the slimmest majority in an election bought and paid for by a ketamine-fueled billionaire who wants to own and control the world (and possibly Mars.)

Every transgression gets worse, and I keep thinking, “Well, they have to do something about this one.” Until they don’t.

So I keep functioning somewhere between depression and denial, clinging to whatever keeps me away from the window ledges. Here, the constant movement of water is a balm to the soul, knowing that it will keep flowing no matter what atrocities we humans visit upon each other and our country. I find relief in singing with others, in good sermons, good books, and even in good television.  

The resort community awakens slowly after a harsh winter when way more snow fell here than in Pennsylvania. Restaurants and stores re-open, boats, freshly shed of their winter shrink wrap, appear on trailers headed for their summer harbor. Harold and Maude, our resident mallard couple, stroll the neighborhood accompanied by another male, perhaps their bachelor son? For the first time in several years, an osprey family has returned to the platform erected in the creek near our dock. We missed watching the nest the last few seasons, assuming that bald eagles  had swooped in and grabbed the eggs one too many times. We’d occasionally see the pair up in a nearby tree when we were out in the kayak and wondered if they’d ever come back to that nesting spot.

They did come back and now young heads once again poke out of the circular enclosure of grass and reeds, anxiously awaiting their next meal. The osprey couple did not give up, even after the terrible onslaught of eagles grabbing their offspring, probably more than once.

They give me hope.