It was wisteria outside the window after all and now it’s blooming marvellous. I’ve been sitting outside admiring it this afternoon. It’s one of those teasing sort of days that makes you think it is high summer already, but I’ve been pulling my hoodie on and off whenever the clouds shift.
Plum is building towers on the paving stones outside the kitchen door. Today, he doesn’t mind how often they fall. He is focussed on colour. He gathers up the blue blocks in one layer, then sets to work on the yellow ones. There seem to be a lot of yellow blocks and they are just the same colour as our bicycle which is propped up by the wall. I think about telling him that, but I don’t. Instead, I watch as he carefully balances the green blocks on top. He likes the green ones best.
This morning, we walked to the supermarket, looking for a new notebook for me. We didn’t find one or at least not one to my liking. But we were felled by the local asparagus. Spring green and gorgeous. Plum thinks they look wonderful and so do I. Last week, there were only the imports from Peru which looked nice, too, but had travelled so unimaginably far. The way I see it, if you bring home jetlagged vegetables, you’re celebrating someone else’s spring, aren’t you?
When I was growing up in Ottawa, spring brought loud Vs of Canada geese over our suburban house. Their cries came at bedtime over the quiet hum of the highway and the sound of my sisters washing the dishes together in the kitchen. Later, when I was older, I would hear the geese overhead as I trekked home from high school after another long rehearsal for the spring musical. Then, they sounded insistent, hungry for distance and change. Like spring when you are a teenager.
I’d like to hear them now, but the seasons shift differently here.
Here, spring came with bluebells, daffodils and now wisteria outside my window. The blackbird in my neighbour’s tree is singing for his mate, and every evening, the sky fills with jackdaws on their way to roost together in the high trees by the school. Plum worries about “naked toes” and is both confused and delighted by his new sandals.
Seasons shift.
It’s been almost a year since I worked in a congregation. A good break, and maybe a necessary one. This time away has meant that my focus has been able to shift. Inevitably, I’ve been less tied to preparing for upcoming seasons of the church year and I’ve had more time to spend in the present, living through the days in order. This has been a season of having the time to listen more closely to the stories my own family tells and for the work of the spirit among us. 
Sometimes that has been just as confusing as any obscure Old Testament passage.
Attention is hard, beautiful work, and today I am glad that sometimes it happens in the sunshine.
