Bill
Spring in Boston officially began on March 21; for some people the end of winter was that afternoon in March when the temperature frst reached 60; for others it was working in their garden or raking winter’s left over debris from their front yard. My first day of spring was the same every year, my birthday, March 5, a full two weeks before March 21, the vernal equinox.
I had often heard March came in like a lion and went out like a lamb. Sometimes it came in like a lamb and out like a lion. I remember one birthday when it was so mild I was outside without a jacket. Another time there was still snow on the ground in early April from a late March storm. It wasn’t weather that made me feel spring had arrived on March 5. It was still dark at night, and chilly. It was more a feeling of progress. February was a winter month; March was a spring month. Any winter weather in March was short-lived. Now that I think of it, the early parts of the seasons, early spring, early fall, were the ones that resonated with me the most. Change was in the air. The cold of winter was over; the heat of summer had peaked. Yet you still had the full measure of spring and fall ahead, when there was no chance of any more snow and when the leaves would change, both prime markers of those seasons.
Here’s an odd thing. I always felt a kinship with animals because of my early March birthday. Many mammals in the north are born in late winter to take advantage of milder spring weather to begin the process of fending for themselves, to learn how to forage or hunt, be part of a pack or herd, move toward maturation before the rigors of winter arrived.
It took me much longer to stand on my own two feet, in every way. But as I got older and learned about mating, birth and survival in the animal kingdom, (Thank you Walt Disney True Life Adventures.) I liked being part of that fundamental order as a spring baby.
Spring or not, we could have some of our bigger snow storms late in March. There were a couple in the early 60s when I was in high school which stunned the greater Boston region. Prospect Street wasn’t plowed for a week. The night of the storm, the wind rattled around the house, the snow piled up outside our front storm door, the street lights flickered as the flakes swirled around them.
The contrast between a spring storm and one in January was apparent the next morning. I look out the window. The sun’s shining. The storm is out in the Atlantic somewhere. I check the thermometer. It’s close to 50 degrees. There’s still a lot of snow so right after some breakfast I grab the shovel and head out.
Opening the back door I already know I’m over dressed. It is so warm out yet everywhere you look there’s snow. The sun is dazzling. The sky deep blue. I clean the back stairs and then make a path to the street. With the temperature this warm the snow is already wet and heavy. On the one hand, this type of snow will be difficult to lift and carry; on the other it will stick together, not blow around, perfect for cutting into blocks.
My jacket comes off as I set to work on a driveway filled with more than a foot of snow. Using my old-fashioned coal shovel, I make a line of slices about a foot apart from one side of the driveway across to the other. Then, going back the other way, I make more slices between the first two resulting in a series of blocks. It’s all very rythmic and orderly. Sliding the shovel under a block I’m left with a perfect cube of snow scooped onto the shovel. It can be heavy though, so sometimes I have to cut a block in half or even quarters before I can carry it to the side where I toss it over the hedge into the front yard. After a while the driveway looks a little like a marble quarry, whole blocks cut out of a wall of white.
It’s an efficient way of removing the snow but it’s also tiring. I’ll stop, lean on the shovel, survey what I’ve done. I am thinking even if there is another storm, snow doesn’t last very long this time of year. Fluffs of snow are already falling out of the trees. There are sounds I don’t hear during January snow shoveling. Water dripping off the roof. A car going by splattering slush. I relax, let my mind drift a little bit, feel the comfortable weight of the spring sun. The part of the driveway I’ve already shoveled is down to bare concrete. There’s even a puddle by the cellar window. I toss my gloves onto the back stairs before I get back to work.
Later I take a walk down the street to the corner. There’s a bit of a breeze. I sense change in the air. A damp sort of fragrance. Water pours down a nearby drain. Some parts of the street are bare. This will freeze over tonight but tomorrow will be another mild sunny day. By the end of the week I might even begin to see some of my back yard.
I liked playing in the back yard those first few years of living in Hyde Park. I remember one time particularly well. It was late in March at the end of our first winter. In the cellar one afternoon I found some old baking pans my mother had discarded. Usually I’d fill them up with water or dirt. This time I thought I’d play with them in the backyard filling them up with what was left of the snow. Then it struck me. I’d be a baker.
My flour was a patch of melting snow. My frosting was the mud the melting snow was creating. I became completely absorbed in this. I’m sitting out there in a pair of snow pants, filling up a discarded pie pan with mud and dirty snow, mixing this concoction with a wooden spoon and then covering the whole thing with a layer of slush. Some imaginary customers would show up. With an old butter knife I’d cut my gourmet mud/snow pie into small pieces. I’d found a broken plastic cup which I filled up with ice water. That was extra. Maybe my customers, penguins apparently, might like a drink along with their pie.
I spent the whole afternoon out in the yard mixing dirt and snow, sometimes sprinkling pebbles on top, or even some dead grass or old leaves. I was so focussed on what I was doing that in spite of sitting on the damp soggy ground I wasn’t cold. I must have presented a wet muddy spectacle to my mother when I finally went in but all I remember now is just how much fun I had, how completely in the moment I was playing in the spring snow making wonderful things.
As April began most of the remaining snow would be in piles, at the ends of driveways, at the edges of parking lots, along the sides of streets. Temperatures overnight might be in the 40’s. Any icicles still hanging off the edges of the house would lie in shattered pieces on the ground in the morning. Shingles on roofs would begin to appear, first at the peak before moving downward. The sides of streets would reveal trails of sand, paper and other debris long covered by snow. Spring showers and the occasional street cleaner will tidy things up eventually but for now the the neighborhood has an unkempt look to it.
There is much less snow in the back. The yard has begun to reappear, first in the corner by the fence. There’s an old tennis ball I haven’t seen since November. After a few weeks even the snow in the shadow of the house gives
up to the warmth of the air.
Trying to walk in the woods behind our house has been difficult the past few months. Freedom of movement had been limited in that snowscape. Now the paths are showing up again. The fallen leaves from last autumn, brown and wet, are decomposing in earnest now devoid of their protective cover of snow.
Up through the leaves come fragile green shoots. Tremulous buds are appearing on the sumac. The yellow flowers of forsythia are already out, and violets and even a few dandelions are showing up in the neighbors’ lawns.
One year I dug some tulip bulbs from a spot in the back woods near a stream and replanted them by the side of our house. Every spring I’d wait for them to pierce the soil. No matter how temperamental spring proved to be displaying its mercurial moods those early weeks, I could always count on these early buds and shoots even if they had to come up out of the ground through a few inches of fresh snow. The larger trees will stay leafless until May and it will be a while before I push a mower over the lawn. Still, spring is here to stay.
As I get older I find I’m okay with leaving the winter behind. I’m okay leaving my winter jacket on the hook in the cellar and wearing a lighter jacket or none at all. I’m okay with being out in the light at 7 and not having the winter darkness pressing against our windows at 5. I’m okay with not having to walk to school in a cold wind “that goes right through you” according to my mother. I like knowing every day will be longer than the one before and that a spring snow squall is merely a temporary setback.
I don’t know if spring fever is a legitimate medical ailment, or even an ailment at all, But I had it. A sense of excitement, even a giddy feeling that in just a few months 6th grade will end, 9th grade finished, 12th grade, high school, over. Walking home from school on a spring afternoon, the sun out, spotting flowers in people’s yards, carrying the jacket I had worn that morning, I did feel a sort of fever. Everything old was new again. Including that familiar spring sound of water running down the streets.
Every day after school I’d walk up Fairmount Hill to get to my house on Prospect Street. It’s the middle of March. Another day of fifth grade is over. I’m carrying several school books, my jacket squeezed in on top of them, beginning the long hike up the hill.
This walk could be a chore. The hill was steep especially as your neared the top. There wasn’t much to look at, or do, just trudge along. Except for a few short weeks every spring. As the snow succumbed to the warm afternoon, the melt water would course down the hill like a series of rivers. That’s how I thought of them anyway. There were obstacles as well. I thought of the mounds of snow left by the plow as mountains the river had to get by. As for me, I was a giant looking down on all this. And like most people, giant or otherwise, I was never content just to let nature run its course.
I did love looking at the intricate patterns created as the water interacted with the snow and ice. Being warmer than the snow, and more forceful, the river of water had undercut most of the piles of snow in its path. I’d watch as the stream ran underneath the snow mountain becoming an underground river for a few seconds before gushing out. I’d drop a twig into the flow, watch it disappear under the snow and then come racing out the other side and down the hill like an out of control boat in rapids.
If the temperature were a little colder the water would flow under a thin coating of ice creating bubbles as it passed. I’d watch as the bubbles would break off in the current and be carried away. The melting water would pick up sand creating a delta as it undercut a snow pile. I began to realize that whatever happened on real rivers was happening here in miniature.
Of course, being a giant, my job was not to look and admire, but to destroy. Stepping on the mounds of snow I’d collapse the tunnels the water had carved out. Momentarily impeded, the water would begin to pool up behind this newly created blockage. Sometimes using a stick I’d make a new passage for the water by scraping out a pathway through the snow or just watch as eventually the newly-formed lake would outflank the snow and start pouring down the street again.
The water could have some force. Pebbles I dropped in would immediately tumble down the street. Larger rocks I placed in the water’s path would create waves as the flow rushed around them. The giant quickly discovered that no matter how much damage he did trying to impede the progress of the water, while he might be able to pause or divert it, the water always won out.
On some afternoons I spent an inordinate amount of time dawdling along up the hill bashing and crumpling those snow piles, fascinated how the water outsmarted me every time, finding a way around any diversion I created. Then one day the river was gone. In its place was a little trickle of water gurgling down the street, not a bit of snow in sight. The giant morphed into a kid again. While summer was a little closer, that dynamic clash of water and snow that had entertained and intrigued me as I walked home from school was over until next spring.
Winter to spring was not all fun and games. In Vermont there is something called mud season. Some called it the fifth season. In that rural state, especially in the 50s, there were a lot of unpaved roads, not just access roads and driveways, but roads up through the woods linking small towns. In winter they would freeze; sleighs, and later snowmobiles, were the preferred way to get about. Then came the thaw, and the mud. Some of these roads became impassable for several weeks. You did not want to get your car stuck on one of them. Mud may seem harmless enough but a heavy vehicle once stuck becomes more and more mired as the slippery, clinging, gluey concoction will not let go.
We had our own miniature mud season in Hyde Park. Before it was paved our driveway was dirt and gravel. Not bad in the summer although it could be dusty, a bit difficult to shovel in the winter, but it was at its worst in spring during those few weeks of warm days and cold nights. The layer of ice just under the dirt remained frozen so the meltwater on top was unable to seep into the soil. The result was a muddy mess.
My father would lie long wooden planks on either side of the driveway so that when we stepped out of the car we might be able to avoid getting mud on our shoes. It was a hit or miss situation. Sometimes the boards would shift when you stepped on them causing you to lose your balance, or, when you put your weight on them, they would sink deeper into the mud leaving you stranded as muddy water began to seep over the board onto your shoes. There were spaces from one board to another so it took a few hops off one board onto another before you made it to the back stairs. Not an ideal situation.
We had newspapers on the floor by the kitchen door where everyone was supposed to wipe their feet but it was a losing battle. My mother didn’t like anyone tracking mud across her clean floors. We’d take our shoes off and put them on the cellar stairs until the time arose once again to get from the house to the car or the house to the street avoiding as best we could mud season in Hyde Park.
A more anticipated marker for spring was the beginning of Daylight Savings’ Time. (It’s really called Daylight Saving Time but I use here the phrase I knew as a kid.) That first Saturday night in April was significant because I knew setting the clocks forward an hour tonight meant there’d be an extra hour of light tomorrow night. With more light later in the evening, it didn’t make any difference what the weather was. Snow all it wants. It’s still light out.
Light far into the evening. In Boston by July it wouldn’t get dark until 9:30. So the beginning of this change in April was special to me. Read about summer night fun in my Jamaica Plain blogs. After supper you could go back outside again to pick up where you left off with your friends. There was something comforting when the harsher light of the day began to gradually transition into the softer more ethereal light of evening. This is light you can move around in easily. Shadows become longer. Windows facing the sunset are golden mirrors. As the sun continues to go down, the neighborhood begins to lose its depth. Trees become ink blots as the sun drops below the horizon. I bask in that afterglow.
But where did that extra light come from? Walking to school one morning in junior high I meet up with a friend down at Truman Highway. Bill, same name as mine, was a smart kid. He must have been. He was on the honor roll every term. Yet you’d never know that from our conversation that morning on the way to school.
It’s Monday morning. Daylight Savings’ Time has commenced over the weekend. As we cross the Neponset River we’re puzzling about where the hour of extra light came from.
“So, we moved the clocks forward an hour Saturday night,” Bill is saying. “All of sudden, last night, when it should have been dark at 6:30, it’s still light.”
“Yeah,” I jump in, “where did that extra hour come from? ‘Cause people say we have an extra hour of light from now on after supper.”
“But in fall,” Bill says, “we lose that hour. Where does that hour go? Is it the same hour?”
“How do you lose an hour? A whole hour. That’s crazy.” I’m getting into this now. It’s such a mystery. And we are so dumb.
We were neglecting the fact it was now darker later in the morning. We didn’t know about that since neither of us got up until after the sun rose. It was always light during breakfast and on the way to school. We were calling Daylight Savings a time change when it was really a time shift.
Bill has a new idea. “Everyone has to put their clocks ahead for this to happen. What if someone doesn’t? Does that mean when it’s light for us in the evening it’s dark for them?”
“Yeah. We should try that next year. We won’t put our clocks ahead and see what happens. That would be crazy.”
“Wait. Wait. What if no one put their clocks ahead? What would happen? Right now at 7 o’clock it will be light. But if no one did, would it be dark at 7 or would it make any difference?”
Bill was on the right track but I made things more confusing by suggesting maybe it had nothing to do with moving the clocks ahead.
“Maybe it has something to do with the sun. With the earth moving around the sun.” Again this was somewhat insightful. Until it wasn’t. “That’s why it gets warm. ‘Cause of that extra hour of sunshine at night.”
“But we already said it might not happen if people didn’t move the clocks ahead. How do clocks control the sun?”
We’re walking by the library now in sight of the school.
“It’s like magic,” Bill is saying. When all else fails there’s always the irrational to fall back on. Or fall forward on.
That night up in my room in the attic I am trying to memorize some spelling words. It’s 7 o’clock. Still light out. I walk over to the window. A little while ago I noticed how stuffy the attic felt when I came up the stairs from the cooler living room. It’s warmer up here because it was warmer outside this afternoon. For the past few months it’s been chilly up here. In another month it will be hot.
Like the clocks, the stuffiness in the attic is another sign of change. I look across at the neighbor’s house. After supper tonight I was playing with the kids that live there. Down the street, in between the big houses on the corner, it’s just light enough so I can still see the sky. Tomorrow afternoon I’ll take my bike out onto the patio, oil the chain, put some air in the tires, get it ready for a new year. The sky is beginning to darken. But it’s not a storm. Just the sun going down.
I walk over to my bed. Pick up the spelling words. I sit there a few minutes. It’s dark out now. Summer isn’t for a few months. But it’s coming. I’ve never been as sure of anything as I am of that.
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