Too Early Timing

 It seems too early for Spring, but despite my calendar, it is here.  Two weeks of temperate weather in mid-February has triggered the wake up alarm on nature's clock.  Buds are swollen on the trees, the bulbs are up and the sun arrives accompanied  by birdsong again.

After a long hiatus I have started back walking.  Not having navigated the 'big hill' in weeks I've had to get used to pacing myself as I make the climb. The area here has changed so much in the last 15 years. There are many more homes now and the road which was dirt and gravel for so long, is now paved.  As I was coming back last week from my walk, I noticed a long angular branch from an oak that the utility men had dropped when cutting back the trees.  It had a beautiful shape and since I had already brought in some forsythia to force, I thought I would see if the swollen buds it carried would open.

We all recognize that life is about timing.  There is our human concept of it, the time we try to buy, sell, save, speed up and in countless other ways allow to dominate the worlds we have created.  Some of that is simply about the orderliness of existence but a great portion is a complicated perception we have about how we believe we need to live our lives. Inevitably there comes a point when we are faced with the truth that we cannot always make events occur when we want.  We miss our flight.  We forget to go online and pay the bills by the due date.  Our meeting runs late and the daycare charges us overtime.  Even though we may feel Spring has arrived too early, here it is.  Even though we may have wanted a contract at work to be completed by now, it still isn't..  Even though we may have sought every possible program for a troubled child and she still cannot step back into the healthy flow of life. Even though we saved a lifetime for retirement and then wake up one morning to discover it evaporated overnight while we were dreaming. Or, the terrible moment when we learn the chemo isn't working or there are no available donors before it will be too late.

 I took the long graceful branch of oak and placed it in water on the living room hearth. Coming and going from my studio I soon quit noticing it until after a few days in the quiet of afternoon tea I looked up to see its curve now filled with the delicate tangerine of blooms.  There is much about living that is mystifying and overwhelming and yet there is still so much richness to life that continues to exist despite the disappointments and failures we experience within the worlds we build for ourselves.  Looking at the tender faces of the oak blooms I thought of how hard we all work--pouring ourselves into our dreams, our families, our jobs and how each of us in our own way has experienced timing that seems so out of joint, so determined to work against us.  It is not unlike this early spring, one day it's only 40 degrees at noon and then overnight its 70.  Our coats are too heavy, the garden is calling, time and us feel out of joint.  It's hard to be off our schedules, blown off course especially when we are trying so hard to stay on course.  But as the beauty of  spring begins to unfold around me I manage to find some lighter clothes in the back of the closet. I start slowly mastering the big hill again and I find myself taking heart. I am reminded one more time, that when our plans go awry, and most especially when we are left desolate in that wake, there is a timing to life not held in our trembling hands and to which we must submit even when it hurts us. Even when we cannot imagine any good to result.  I am learning again, when that happens, there is still going to be somewhere waiting, an oak branch that we needed to see bloom.