R. R. 2, Brandon, Wisconsin 53919
March and April! The very sound of the names of the two months
as we say them immediately seems to merge into another word SPRING.
Spring is just around the corner. While we have been shivering
throughout the winter the thought of another spring on the way
always gives one a lift.
My old Dutch Grandmother used to say, ‘I like it in the
spring for then we can think to ourselves, ‘Now we have two
summers before us, before we have the second winter!’ But in
the fall it works the other way. So it appears, it is all in the
way you look at it. And isn’t this true of so many things we
meet up with in life?
I can hear some of the Steam Brothers say, ‘Ah! Spring makes
me think of Steam Reunions, good old black smoke, Antique Cars,
Steam Calliopes, and chaff down my neck.’
Spring can mean falling in love for the young man and lady who
have been seeing a great deal of each other for the past months, or
even a year or two, if they are a bit on the old fashioned side.
For the undisciplined the wine of its wonder can lead to acts to
regret which bring about ill considered unions. To the affected
parents it can bring consequent tears and hurried plans.
To the very old it can be a very hard time as they try to
continue on for another year. Winter has left them weak in body.
There will be many new graves. Some may well repeat the words of an
elderly neighbor of mine some years back. She asked her daughter
plaintively as she lay dying, ‘Oh dear! Why didn’t I get
this over with last spring?’
To the farmer who loves his soil it is a real joy to pick up a
handful of it and work it in his hand. If it forms into a ball it
is not quite ready to work. But there is great activity as he
readies his machinery. Then he whistles more often than at other
times of the year, and his wife, battling with the winter
housedirt, knows he is a happy man.
To the geese overhead it is an absolute picnic, at least that is
what one takes it for as you hear them honking. If the weather will
permit the door should be ajar. Their discordant sweetness just
must get to you for SPRING is in the air and you don’t want to
miss a moment of it.
And then the hum of tractors starts, and lasts well into the
evening, as the planting time progresses. The farm wife looks
through her freshly washed window and separates one farmer’s
tractor lights from those of another, and knows just who is out
working on the eager fields which are only awaiting seed and sun to
come alive with millions of promising blades. The moon looks
cooperatively warm and friendly to every effort. The farm wife and
mother returns to the ironing board. Sweaters have been laid away.
There are now so many more school blouses and shirts to smooth into
clean beauty.
Spring is the rush season also to the Greenhouse Lady six miles
away. She is more than a business acquaintance, she is a
horticultural friend. All her green fringed boxes of plants are
being moved out into the open air now and taking on a new
sturdyness for the gardens of the community. Her nose and fingers
are brushed with good earth from morning until night as she wraps
and staples package after package.
Spring is new awakening to the Child of God. It is choirs
singing Hallelujahs, lilies upon altars, Sunrise Services and new
dimensions of trust as each year brings him closer to that looked
for Resurrection Morning of his own experience. Your writer feels
too many Christian people do not live close enough to their
anticipation to make it a great challenge of daily overcoming
power. After all we CAN’T lose, now can we? We have all of
this, and HEAVEN TOO.
The long nights of winter have given us fresh strength for the
season ahead. Surely God plans everything so well. Of course if we
want to stay out all night and mess things up well we can go ahead
and do it, but who is going to be the loser? Nobody but US
ourselves.
As a member of a presently operating book club, I am reading a
new book. It is well written and interesting, but, rather sordid.
(I wonder if my inquisitive spider will look into this one.) Now I
realize that as a writer, I hunt for all the best things in the
world and try to minimize the vulgar and unclean; is. Perhaps I am
wrong in this as life’ is as it is. Rut I feel we need
something to shoot at something high and noble. How the author of
this book ever got his words on paper between his liquor I will
never know. He traveled from bar to bar.
But this verse of the Bible comes back to me again and again,
‘Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever
things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things
are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of
good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise,
think on these things.’
If we think along these lines, naturally we write ;along these
lines. I said to my husband just the other day, ‘I have trouble
enough keeping my life in line when I’m cold sober so I
couldn’t afford to drink.’ So I guess it is all in the way
you look at it, but it is a marvelous experience to see spring as a
fresh gift from God, and a trust put into our hands. Here’s for
the rake and the shovel, the lawn mower and the hoe. Have a happy
Springtime, all of, you. And don’t work too hard now.
