One of the traps of adulthood is the vague complaining about change.
It’s spring, which means that whole daylight savings thing and it’s dark again when we get up. (‘Shh about the being light later part, we’re still grousing because it’s dark now.)
The changes in weather – sometimes as many as five or six times in any given day – can drive you up the wall, too. What do you wear when it’s 44 degrees when you get up, but 70 at lunch? Or a glance out the window shows a day that’s brilliantly sunny, but fails to mention it comes with a wind that comes straight from the Arctic? Or the rain forecast that was described as “possible showers” turns out to be torrential—or you are braced for thunderstorms and downpours and it never even sprinkles?
Don’t get me started about spring allergies. The gorgeous blossoms on the trees everywhere are immune to (or outsmart – I wouldn’t put it past them) whichever allergy medication I try. Then the rain knocks down all the blossoms, and weeds take over the entire world, but especially my yard. And of course, when you have to go out and deal with the weeds – and the lawn that goes from dormant to Little Shop of Horrors tall during one baseball game – and yep, you have to play clothing roulette and try to outsmart the weather.
So yes, it’s easy to feel like shaking your fist at the sky and grumbling away… but luckily, I have an antidote to the middle-aged grumps: preschoolers. Kids don’t notice the weeds, or the grass that needs to be cut in that two hour window when it’s dry enough and it’s still light outside. To kids, rain means umbrellas and rainboots – yay! Sunshine means outside – yay! To them, the world is always spring – new, amazing, changing, interesting, delightful – yay!
One of my favorite poems is an e e cummings verse about spring. It begins “in Just-spring when the world is mud-luscious,” and the lines have been running through my mind when my little blossoms and blooms and grasses begin to emerge from the long winter days. The poet runs together the names of children, which sounds exactly like what it seems like when they are together: “and eddieandbill come running from marbles and piracies…” A beat later: “and bettyandisabel come dancing from hop-scotch and jump-rope…”
At school “preschool spring” has joyfully sprung, and while eddieandbill and bettyandisabel are not playing marbles or hop-scotch, they are enjoying the mud-luscious, puddle-wonderful days. There are pink and white blossoms to gather as the wind blows them from the trees. (Flowers from the trees! Who ever heard of something so marvelous? And the wind! Look at the wind! Cool!) There is lovely soft dirt to dig in and turn over, looking for worms. There are discoveries to make with chalk on dry sidewalks that disappear when it rains, or what happens when you draw on wet sidewalks? There are clouds to watch scuttle across the sky. There are puddles and drains and droplets and surprising dry spots under a piece of play equipment. It’s all science and magic and wonder, all day.
The worm contingent has been especially strong. There have been worms of every description unearthed and deposited in containers – the play kitchen has been decimated of cups and pots – and there are always at least four preschoolers bent over, observing the creatures. We’ve seen long, short, fat, thin, wiggly, dead, dirty, slimy, and stiff worms. We talk about how the worms have jobs to do, and how they need to be treated gently. We talk about how they need to go back into their dirt area at the end of recess, and how we all need to do a really good job of washing our hands when we go back inside. (A really, really good job.) But most of all we look, and marvel, because the world is so very mud-luscious.
On any given school day you might see me bundled in a sweatshirt with Kleenex in every pocket, admiring a partially-evaporated puddle that’s decorated with pollen. Because it’s Just-spring, and all the world is puddle-wonderful…
