This year Old Man Winter was rough on us, in the rural upper-northwest corner of Illinois, so any signs of spring are welcome. Well, maybe not so much the smell from the hog farm just a couple of miles away (as the crow flies and the wind blows.)
When we lived in the city a sign of spring might be: the return of the cart food vendors and street musicians, the ice cream store reopening, the last of the tiny melting mounds of soot-blackened snow, or the runners along the lake front donning shorts once again.
The cooler temperatures still linger here but, I'm heartened by signs that warmer weather is soon to arrive in our corner of the world, like another nearby farm that sheared their ewes in preparation for lambing (shearing makes it easier for the babies to find the udder, I'm told), or the return of the bluebirds and red-wing blackbirds. My husband is relieved that the mailbox is no longer in jeopardy of being knocked over by the snow plow.
This week I noticed the hyacinths and other early perennials poking through the ground...
Speaking of rising up from the ground, spring always reminds me of a story John once told me. John was the "jack-of-all-trades" that the Sisters of Charity employed at their suburban Chicago "Mallinckrodt" motherhouse, named for their German foundress. The nuns were downsizing to just one or two small buildings and a small plot of land, having sold most of their acreage and their huge school/dormitory to the university, where I was employed. The university would use the space to open a satellite campus. Part of the contract stipulated that the university must hire John, with full university benefits. John's work had been essential to the sisters over many years. He knew the grounds and buildings like the back of his hand, so it was almost a win-win situation they claimed. The nuns would have no worries that their loyal assistant would be unemployed and the university would have the benefit of an honest, dependable and capable man who already knew the nuts and bolts of the operation (and I'm pretty sure the cunning sisters had reckoned that this type of situation would assure keeping John nearby for when they needed his help.)
The nuns were correct about one thing, John seemed able to fix anything. He was an electrician, a plumber, a carpenter, a machine mechanic, and I think he even worked on the nuns cars. He had a roomy, well-equipped and orderly workshop in the basement of the school building.
If I needed to place a work order or arrange a catered event with the staff chef, there were university protocols in place, such as voice mail or online requests. But I always liked, if time permitted, to make my request in person. It never hurts to schmooze, I always say.
On one of those days of kibitzing, John told me the story of the burial casket. It seems one of the nuns had died in the winter and the ground was semi-frozen. Did I mention that John also was a grave digger for the nuns' on-property cemetery? Anyway, John told the nuns that he would place the deceased sister's casket in a holding vault, to be buried when the ground was properly thawed in May. The sisters, believing John to be capable of miracles, insisted he could think of some way to get the nun immediately buried. So, John, using a portable heater and tenting to warm the ground, did the best he could. When the spring thaw came, it was accompanied by unusually heavy rains. "It was Easter Sunday," John said, shaking his head, "when the dear departed sister's coffin popped up right through the soil."
And do you know that golf balls also pop up in the spring? During the golf season a ball might become, figuratively, not literally, buried in the rough. These golf balls are sometimes then run over by a golfer driving a cart willy-nilly, as he frantically searches for his ball in the area he last saw it. The weight of the cart, two golfers and two sets of clubs, further buries the ball, this time literally. The ground freezes and contracts in the winter, sucking the ball in even more. But come spring, come the melting of snow, the thawing of soil and the heavy rains, up pops the ball. Why it's almost miraculous!
For my husband and I, spring is one of our two annual ball hawking ventures. We live on a golf course that is closed from December 1, until April 1, weather dependent. When closed, we walk the course twice a year to look for lost and unclaimed balls. We usually go in early December and then again just before the course opens in April. The spring season is when I spy my favorite finds, the balls just peeking up from the ground, right between the first and second cut of rough, just off the fairway.
We clean the balls and reuse them. We have a friend who visits, who can easily go through a couple of dozen balls in 18 holes of golf and it helps to have a bunch on hand for him. The grandkids have fun playing with a large assortment of balls, and because they’re young they still enjoy washing the golfballs for us. On occasion I have found my own ball, which I'd lost the summer before.
A gift from a loved one, special ball-finding glasses
And sometimes when you're looking for golfballs, you find other signs of spring like an antler shed.
***
bend, tee up my ball
breathe, swing, making good contact
smile, watching it soar
Ev'ry ball starts as
a shot delivered hope-filled
but some hook or slice
lost ball, where’d it go?
mourned, then found again, revived
reused, then re-lost
first sign of spring here,
confession from a ball hawk,
thaw heaves up golf balls
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