Spring

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Friday, March 6, 2009 at 8:48am

I was just driving the kids to school and noticing, not for the first time, how totally filthy my windshield is. I have recently had the same thoughts about the windows of my house and the bird cage, which needs to be completely emptied and taken outside for a power wash with the hose. It's spring cleaning time. Time to shake off the layer of winter grime, freshen up and start over.

I can't help imagining what that felt like for people who lived, a la Little House in the Big Woods, in a dirt floored cabin, without running water, in each others pockets all winter, eating that which had been so carefully laid aside in the summer and fall. They had to discipline their children in ways that we couldn't imagine in order to survive all cooped up together and keep them from any of the numerous potential injuries or deaths that awaited in those conditions without an emergency room or, often, even a doctor nearby. They had to discipline themselves even more strictly, as us poor grown-ups always have to do.

No sloppy sentimental anthropomorphizing of pigs and chickens. They had to look into the eyes of the animals that they raised from babies and killed and know that it was the only way their family would survive the winter. What a luxury to be vegetarians, to choose what we will and will not eat based, not on availability, but moral conviction.

Like princesses, bananas and pineapples are brought to us from afar in January. What luxury. What delicacies. I remember the wide eyes of a friend who came to stay with us from Lithuania many years ago as we loaded him and his meager store of English words into the car for a ski trip to Harbor Springs. Driving into the northern Michigan whiteness, we drove through a fast food restaurant and, minutes after ordering and presenting a minimal ammount of currency, bags of steaming hot food were handed out through the window. Next stop was a grocery store where, in the midst of the icy blue winter cold there were mounds of fresh produce, all very reasonable.

I do think about the footprint we leave on the earth, compared to the footprint of those settlers who lived off what was near. Gasoline spent to bring us fresh produce in the dead of winter, coal burned to heat water for hot winter showers and baths and light on the short cold days and long cold nights. I've been thinking a lot about simplifying, and the idea of opening the windows and letting the cool air of spring and the warm summer air into my house. The ideas of simple spring cleaning, the pleasure of shedding the winter claustrophobic closeness, difficult in my huge modern West Bloomfield home, unimaginable in a small log cabin in the woods, and the winter layer of grime are so tantalizing.

We will shed our winter layers, watch the flowers come up, light a fire in the fire pit, clean up, freshen up, open up, breathe the air and come out of our cave. Last night a warm spring breeze beckoned to me when I went to close the garage door. It said "Come out. Come out." And I did. And I will.