Changing of the Guard

Wow, I have been lazy. I haven't posted a blog in over a week. I had kinda-sorta resolved to at least put up one entry a week if not more, but this was my wife's "Annual Appeal" week at work. During that early March week I am usually enlisted to help stuff envelopes, record pledges and assist with the mailing. She is a fund-raiser, and they need all the help they can get. Thus I have had to use my blog time to turn the wheels of charity.

We had the time change a week ago. It has always been a milestone in the year, along with Annual Appeal time. The days are getting longer anyway but with Daylight Time once again in force, the extra light in the afternoon is welcome. It signals the switch from winter to summer, dark to light, cold to warm, even though it is still obviously winter, pretty much dark and often cold. Twilight at 7:00 PM is just a reminder that the climate soon will be much more forgiving if I am patient.

When I was little, I remember seeing the crocus shoots pushing up through the cold March soil, frequently covered with a thin layer of snow. That was a sign that things were going to start happening, because shortly after the tulips would begin to grow as well. As the frosts fell away in a rapid succession of weakening winter days, my dad's petunias, pansys and roses would begin to make their colorful appearances in his flower bed below our front porch. That was a hundred or so miles south of here where the climate is not different in a dramatic way, but March is the moment when life seems to renew. Here in northern Missouri, there are some warm days and the wonderful twilight even beyond the dinner hour. Even so Spring will start in earnest next month.

With all of this comes the lack of necessity for a heavy jacket and the real necessity of mowing the lawn. And also along with this is the dreaded tornado season; that time of year which has single-handedly caused New Yorkers and Californians alike to wonder what in the world would tempt rational human beings to live in this belt of torn trees, homes without roofs, hail, and those ominous break-in television bulletins warning of impending doom. They look at us and ask how we can stand living with that kind of implied violence just as we wonder how they can live anticipating earthquakes and terrorist attacks.

Those of us from Kansas recognize Tornado Season as a kind of fifth season separate from the other four. It is one part horror movie, one part science and two parts wild imagination. Spring days are warm, sunny days with a healthy singing of birds. Tornado season days are hot humid affairs with towering thunderheads blotting out the sun, changing from cotton-white to a sick greenish-black. Nothing can chill your blood on those afternoons like a chorus of sirens rising all over town to alert you to a storm lurking unseen in the distance with a hungry eye on your house. Especially after you have already witnessed the unthinkable done to your fellow citizens.

It is part of the arrangement we have around here. Occasionally a high price will be paid by some. You just try not to imagine that it will ever be you, your family, your home that is called on to write that check.

The hard cold armor of winter now has a chink which we all can see. In the days ahead the nights will be less frosty and the days will cast that welcome warmth on our faces. People will appear wearing shorts and T-shirts at the earliest possibility, only to have to wear jeans and a heavy coat the next day. But yes, my friends, we have turned a corner.