Spring is certainly out there somewhere!
It’s an exciting season of hope and newness. Soon our wondering eyes will be able to feast on tender green shoots of grass interspersed with yellow dandelions playing a haphazard game of ticktacktoe all over our good old prairie soil.
Of course, none of that has happened yet because we are all still buried under tons and tons of snow, just as we have been for far, far too long.
That’s all gonna change next week according to the weatherman who just has to be right for once, I’m thinking.
He told us, and I want desperately to believe him, that spring, which has shown up on the calendar, but not in our lives, is about to descend.
I, for one, am almost ridiculously happy about that.
The other day, I got tired of winter and doing the dishes and being all grown up and mature, which, in reality, happens more often than I care to admit.
But luckily, on that day I had a couple of playmates with me who didn’t have to worry about being all grown up because they aren’t. They’re only five and two.
“Let’s go splash in some mud puddles, boys,” I coaxed. “Then we can come in and eat cookies and ice cream.” The last was an afterthought. I know their mom had said something about healthy snacks like fruit and yogurt, so we would have to eat fast before she came to pick them up, and caught us in the act.
The boys, who will willingly follow me anywhere, because they think I am the grown up and should know what I’m doing because, after all, I am their grandma, did just that. They followed me.
I showed them how to jump hard on a mud puddle covered with a thin veneer of ice and how satisfying it is to hear and see the ice crackle, and in the process, get a little bit wet.
We spent a satisfying half hour or so splashing about in all the mud puddles we could find and then we came in; cold, wet and completely delighted with ourselves.
The mom came to get her two little mud puddle splashers while they were still digging their spoons into that chocolate chunk ice cream that is so creamy and delicious you just know it must have at least a day’s worth of calories in every single spoonful.
I was appropriately apologetic about the type of childcare I had provided for the boys.
I apologized about their wet jeans and sodden boots. I shook my head mutely when one little guy (the one that is a tattletale) said they had three cookies each.
The mom gathered up her precious charges and took them home and I made a beeline for the couch.
My goodness, heaven knows I needed my rest.
But before I fell asleep I did a quick rewind in my mind of the afternoon.
And I smiled.
I smiled because even when the winter is long, the heating bill exorbitant, the sink plugged up and the car heater pathetic, one can be grateful that spring is waiting to be reborn.
And one can be grateful that as long as there are mud puddles there will be little boys to delight in splashing in them.
I must tell the mom to send rubber boots next time, I think, as I drift off to sleep. And, I must tell her to send a pair for grandma, too.
ON THE OTHER SIDE