The Offline Mind

Crocus and snowdrops are the suckling pigs this spring, coming up fat and hot in the April sun. I watch as a squirrel carries in his mouth the lifeless body of a bird, deflated like a month-old balloon. He didn’t make the kill, that’s obvious—it’s just some poor old sparrow that died his own way and was probably tucked by human hands into a bush when he made the sidewalk his tomb. The squirrel is missing patches of fur, middle-aged or diseased (same same I laugh silently). He sets it down on the stoop and looks at me as if to say “mine, not yours” and I mutter “enjoy your meal” since I waitered for all those years.

The crocus are coming up prepared-mustard yellow and curly-ribbon purple and the snowdrops are as white as God’s teeth. I think of how some calendar days used to mean one thing and now they mean another, with two children born on my parent’s birthdays, respectively. Daughters, tying me forever astrologically to my mother’s apron strings and my father’s bootstrap. I clang clang behind them both like a tin can. I think of how September 27th used to be a former lover’s birthday and now it’s the anniversary of my mother’s death. Same same. I think of how May 1 was the birthday of my dearest childhood friend, and now my son, both stubborn as bulls. He shouted up I HATE YOU from the basement the other day because I told him he had to go on a field trip with his class to see the orchestra. Later that night he turned to me coyly and asked “what’s an orchestra?”

Crocus are short and lowly flowers, so eager to blossom they can’t even bother to stand. And yet, a queen bee will spend the night slumbering in such a humble blossom. Good crocus. Useful crocus. Sit. Stay. And a rose, tall and proud, hardly gives any nectar. I am like a crocus I suppose, though I’d like to be finer (maybe I was once? finer and less useful I mean).

At noon I’m reminded how spring sings her low hum through the air, like an old radiator starting up again. And I’m reminded of how silly I was to be sad that it was winter, and how fast it all is, and how slow I am, and how desperately sad I’ll be when it’s all gone.