THE MORE THINGS CHANGE...

The sweet-breath-of-spring is blooming.

This is my favorite plant in the yard. It is a special favorite for two reasons:

1.) It blooms at the end of winter, when everything outside still looks dead and gray, and it smells like distilled sunshine. I am so tired of dead and gray. The delicate, sweet-smelling blossoms promise me: "Spring is coming! Hold on!"

2.) This plant is from my friend Donna. Everytime it blooms and envelopes me in its sweetness, I feel like Donna is giving me a long-distance hug.

I took the RAV4 for a drive today. Man, I sure do love this car! Now that I drive a company car for work, the Toyota only gets out on weekends. Big Red and I drove down Yellowhammer Lane, past the 140+-year-old house where I spent all but the first two years of my childhood. The house was built by great-great-granddaddy from yellow poplar milled right there on the property, then passed down to Uncle John and Aunt Lulie, then modernized by my parents. All of my childhood memories of home, save one, are set in that house. My wedding reception was held in that house. I don't know who lives there now.

Big Red and I drove on to Ebenezer Cemetery, to check on the long-dead grandparents and the recently-dead parents. At the cemetery, a white-whiskered man stood at the base of a tree, coon dog at his side, shotgun cradled across his right forearm. He paused from staring up into the tree limbs to glance at me.

"Have you no respect for the dead," I wondered, "following a coon into a cemetery?!" Then I thought: there are probably many folks buried here who, if they could speak, would holler, "Get 'im, Cletus!" I did not stop to walk among the gravestones but kept driving. Cletus had a job to do. I didn't want to interrupt.

After we got back home, I parked Big Red and took a walk back on the farm today, first time in over a month. Mr. Baker has installed a new gate on the road leading back to the pastures. It is nice, swings easily on its hinges, so easy to open. There were lots of new babies - brown and black and cream-colored fuzzballs that snorted and kicked up their heels when I said, "Hello, baby!"

And there were more signs of a farm sinking into increasing neglect: the sinkholes below the old pond are larger now, and there are more of them. Great holes gape in the deteriorating walls of the green barn, which no longer has a single spot of green paint on it.

As I returned home, I stopped in the thicket below Grammy's house and picked a bouquet of volunteer daffodils. They sit like a spot of sunshine on the kitchen table now.

Today was a melancholy day for me. Seems like more and more days are, lately. I don't know if that's because I stay chronically tired, or because I miss my children, or because my work is often sad, or because it's late winter, or because I don't sleep well when the moon is full, or because I often feel lonely, or because I am frickin' tired of being the person responsible for figuring out what's for lunch after church on Sunday, or whatever.

But today was also lovely. The comfortable familiarity of an old frame house, granite headstones, and a path over hills that feel like members of my family.

Warm sunshine, high blue skies, new life exploding with energy across winter-weary fields, golden daffodils nodding on slender stems.

And a hug from Donna, the sweet-breath-of-spring.