Present
Artful Wobbler
When we check the clock we’re usually looking for what time it isn’t. We want to know if we’re late or early for whatever we do next. Often we won’t even take in the real time but we’ll know and remember we have 10 minutes before that other appointment, lunch or catching the train. And so checking time at this moment catapults us into a time that hasn’t happened. Then you find yourself saying ‘how is it almost April already?’
After an unusually cold and snowy winter, snowdrops have popped up. By late March even winter lovers stretch toward spring the way the flowers and trees bend to the sun, and snowdrops are among the first signs of its arrival. And so it’s easy to see snowdrops for something they stand in for, like longer days and warmer air, buds and daffodils, lilacs, cherry blossoms, all piling on the tiny white head of the snowdrop. No wonder it droops.
Seeing snowdrops feels like hope, for sunnier skies, more flowers, fewer layers to pull on before leaving the house or work. Hope is a funny beast, capable of both comfort and cruelty, but in this case it’s a thief. Snowdrops as harbinger of a springier future robs us of seeing a delicate flower, full and complete in itself right now. It’s already enough. The soil has stirred enough to produce this flower. The earth has warmed enough. The little snowdrop poking out of still cold ground filled with the messy debris of winter doesn’t need to be a promise of a better time to come. It’s a gift now.