Spring blooms with faith, reflections

Leaf sprinkles are popping. Just like people, they don't stay babies for long. 

In Spokane I spotted daffodils in bloom. William Wordsworth's famous poem ends, “And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.” Splashes of color after the bare winter revive the spirit. Just so, an act of kindness or a good word for someone caught in a barren landscape. There is more than one way to send flowers. 

A pair of robins moved in on our front porch. Not to locate, but to launch a nest, littering it with moss and grass — a collection station for their leftovers. It's a mess that I'm in no hurry to clean up. It's rather like being welcomed to the neighborhood. This is our first spring in our new digs.

The red — winged blackbirds are singing in the marshes. Mom was born in Red Wing — in picturesque small-town Minnesota. That alone makes a soft spot for these first spring birds balancing among the reeds. They are my outdoor “keepsake box.”

A lemon butterfly floated past a nearby walking path; a winged flower of the air. Who says flowers grow only from the ground. A reminder to lift my eyes, to look beyond what I expect. 

I think that flicker who has taken up his courtship drumming on our chimney, has found his girl. At least I saw a pair on our forested backyard tree trunk. After four years, my widowed sister-in-law was tired of being alone. She had gotten a dog right away, so she could say “we” — but Hazel, perfect as she was, was not enough. At nearly 70, this woman braved online dating a few months ago — and found her guy.

I watched a duck pass low above the lake in the early morning sun, casting its moving image across the still water. It was gone in a blink. I thought if I ever write a memoir I'll title it, “Flying Reflection.” It seems I have flown across the face of life in a quick breath, too. But that's measuring by earth's time. I wondered with some friends if heaven even has a calendar. That seems like such a waste of eternity.

Someone I know recently had a serious medical issue, requiring heart surgery. I promised to pray. As I sat at the window doing just that, a gray squirrel perched on the roof of a birdhouse nailed to a tree trunk just opposite me. It stayed motionless for the longest time. Not a flick of its bushy tail. It occurred to me in a moment of whimsy that it might be praying with me. Who's to say — if God sent the animals to the Ark — that He couldn't send one to me.

Spring is my favorite. April, May, and June total 91 days; it seems like a big number until it isn't. Seven of those are already gone. Every year I want to close my palm around them and hold on — and every year they wriggle through my fingers. They are bouncy things — these hours of spring.

The best thing that I can do is exactly what Wordsworth did over 200 years ago — dance with the daffodils — for a little while.

Carol Shirk Knapp is the author of "The Preacher's Kid" column.