A Walker in the Suburbs

The birds woke me this morning. Well, not really. But I was conscious of them at an early stage of awakening. I was thinking about their bravery. They have no choice but to be themselves. And that, as we know, is not always easy.

This time of year birds are heedless. It’s springtime and they’re taking chances. Bumping into windows, buzzing cars. They are high-wire artists, full of song and derring-do. They have mating on their minds, of course. They will stop at nothing to find their lady (or gentleman) loves. They may as well be deer dashing across the highway. But if I ran into a bird I wouldn’t dent the car.

So add to the list of spring marvels the madness (and madcapness) of birds. They flit, they soar, they perch on electric wires. They throw their slight bodies gladly into the world.

The one I remember was teal and beige, nubby and flecked. It was lightweight and lined. It was essential in the way that white gloves were once essential.

It was my spring coat.

I thought of it this morning as I trudged to work in my winter coat. It’s what I turn to when the temperature is in the 30s, which it was when I left the house.

But it’s ten degrees warmer here in the city, and the coat suddenly seems a relic, an anomaly, something that should be buried in the back of the closet.

What I need today is a spring coat, a bridge from season to the other.

Spring is trying, really it is. Green shoots shove through the half-frozen earth. Maples redden with buds.

But the snow keeps falling, and the colds winds keep blowing and the temperatures keep dropping.

In Virginia and throughout much of the country, in the landscape of the body and the landscape of the soul, it’s the winter that won’t go away.

When I woke yesterday I thought it would be another exercise-in-the-house day, but by mid-afternoon, I could see black pavement on my street and beyond.

Whether it was due to the relatively warm pavement temperature of mid-March or my county’s new, hard-won facility with snow removal, the roads were clear and I could walk through winter unimpeded.

This was a gift. I didn’t have to look down at my feet, dodging snow, slush or ice. I could look at trees sagging with the white stuff, at snow heaped on buds near to blossoming.

For a moment I was in an alternative universe, one stripped of color, where spring comes not in yellow, pink and purple, but in parchment, eggshell and alabaster.

It was a window on winter, before it goes away.