Spring: New Birth and Nana

I first wrote this for my grandmother's birthday three years ago, and thought it warranted a share today. Happy birthday, Nana!

My father's mother was born at the start of spring. Since I was a child, I have carried March 21 around specially in my heart, knowledge that is too known to be knowledge, simply truth that slides in and stays: spring equals Nana, and Nana equals spring.

It's almost a chicken or egg question, really - which came first, spring or Nana? I cannot glimpse one without the other. I cannot smell fresh dirt without thoughts of helping her plant impatiens. I cannot hear bird songs without thinking of her bird feeder, ever popular with birds and those unwelcome squirrels, and her stack of Audubon books that she seems to memorize so she can greet every chirping visitor by name. I cannot feel brassy warm wind without thinking of her honey lilt singing:

Like a leaf or feather
in the windy, windy weather,
swirl around and twirl around,
and all fall down together!
 
I like to imagine the signs of new life that crept forth with her birth on 1928's first spring day in Athens, Alabama. I imagine her first wail piercing the air in equal time with the blue jay's song, the hawk's dive, the irrepressible wing beats of the hummingbird. Drawing breath with the birds and buds, for a moment she held the full and unknown world within herself: all change and challenge, slats of shattering lightning and gentle stirs of blossoming breezes. I imagine her Irish pastor father bending down to bless her, his only daughter. I imagine her mother, born in China to missionaries, lifting her up with lullabies, her last child. I imagine her four brothers, who ranged in age from nine to fifteen, passing her back and forth between themselves, cradling their baby sister with curiosity and amusement.

Even on stark winter days, even in the sweltering summer, she brings me springtime moments.

She shares our family history, storytelling with breadth and depth, our ancestors as familiar to her as neighbors. She brings her friendly smile to strangers, and still gathers with her close-knit college friends, a breath of fresh air to both. She took me on my first transatlantic adventure, to County Wicklow, Ireland, and we stood on rocks overlooking the Irish Sea at dusk and one minute the sun shone and the next it washed itself in shadows, and it was so important to stand next to my grandmother in those moments.

She sings the hymns we've both known since childhood (since she helped teach them to me), her southland soprano strong and sweet. She embraces and laughs with bursting beauty, sweeping us up into safety and joy. I would fall asleep listening to her blessings and prayers, her stories and songs.

I sent her not one, but two birthday cards last week. The outdoor, beach-y art on each pulled me into her heart, her love of water and sky. "What could be better than lying in a hammock or being out on the bay in a sailboat?" she wrote back, then added: "Having you with me would be."

And I cannot wait because soon I will be with her, this weekend for Easter, and even if it's the second coming of winter it won't matter, because spring equals Nana, and Nana equals spring.

The Friday Five (on Saturday): Spring Forward!

A Friday Five on Saturday! That must mean it's been a good, busy week. What's been saving your life in these first days of spring weather (including but not limited to the spring weather itself)? Here are a few of mine...

1. Fun times at work - listening to female faculty talk about their latest books on Tuesday, then on Thursday a community cook-off on the patio. Both involved food and friends - what could be better? 

2. Speaking of patios and outdoors, SPRING FORWARD HAPPENED. We took our first post-Daylight Savings walk this week, hallelujah. I feel like I grow more and more attuned to when and how the light comes and goes every year. Did a little bit of gardening (a.k.a. turning over soil) too.

3. A long, fun catch up dinner with a friend on Wednesday night - we sat outside (I sense a theme emerging...) and several other friends stopped by our table as the night wore on, which was fun. I am grateful for community. 

4. Gathering with some of my favorite ladies to celebrate our friend's impending fourth child (and first girl!) last night with plenty of cheese, chocolate, and laughter - a great way to kickoff the weekend.

5. Hermione interviewed Hamilton, and it was awesome. If that sentence made no sense, a) you're missing out, and b) I'll backtrack so you're no longer missing out. Emma Watson (aka the brightest witch of her age) and Lin-Manuel Miranda (aka the ten dollar founding father without a father) talked for Watson's #HeForShe United Nations initiative, and I got warm feelings in my heart for both of them even more than I already had. You can watch all of the interview here, but my favorite part was when Emma beatboxed and Lin freestyled on gender equality. (Spellcheck is telling me that these aren't verbs, wake up Spellcheck.)

LMM: I'm SURE they were beatboxing on set during those movies!

EW: Oh yeah, English schoolkids, that's what we do all the time. We just beatbox.

Watch and get your smiles for the day. (I mean, doesn't that thumbnail make you smile on its own?) 

Honorable Mentions: I'd say it's pretty imperative to be able to laugh with your spouse, and we've done a lot of that lately; a sweet note from a sweet friend; meaningful writing sharing; two of my best friends connected randomly in Boston and sent me a picture; one of my oldest friends matched at her top med residency choice; the joy and memories that March Madness brings; lunch dates with my mama; an Irish sing-along at my grandmother's retirement community on St. Patrick's Day. Phew! I'm grateful.

Your first big trip.

Tomorrow is Saint Patrick's Day, and we have a dear friend coming over from Dublin for a couple of weeks. She's the same friend that hosted us when my grandmother took me across the sea for the first time at fourteen years old.

It's funny what sticks in your heart and mind on your first big trip, even when it's been a decade and a half (or longer!). Writerly note: Sometimes, when you're writing about memories, or you want to write about a particular person, place, experience, or situation, the best way to start is to make a bulleted list. It doesn't really matter how you say what you want to say; first, it just needs to get out on paper. Then you can go back and see what stands out, what needs filling in, what else the memories stir in you.

A bulleted list! Here we go - Ireland, 2002...

- How the eight hour plane ride felt like nothing and the airplane dinner tasted delicious

- Looking down upon squares upon squares upon squares of green from the sky

- The swooping sensation of being on the "wrong" side of the road in the car, as if I were leaning too far to the left and couldn't regain equilibrium...

- Walking into the house and looking around and going out to the garden and again, this feeling of unbalance, disbelief almost, that this was a house and a garden but on a piece of land completely different from everything and anyone else I knew.

- The shifting sky over Greystones Harbour - color and cold wind intermingled, and how the sun showed up at all different angles on the green hilltop straight ahead of us. The smooth stones I picked up from the beach, now in a box in my childhood bedroom.

- Irish butter, a thing of beauty, breakfast had no equal. And how they said "half eight," not "eight thirty."

- The bright colors of Powerscourt Gardens.

- Meeting friends and family of our hosts, who all came over for dinner one night, and feeling so special as the visitors from faraway.

- Going through at least four rolls of film in the first two days; we wouldn't get a digital camera until the next summer.

- Driving up into the hills of Wicklow to Glendalough, and the rushing water, the dark green of the eternal forest, standing small gazing up at ancient stone. I had only just seen The Fellowship of the Ring, and I hadn't read the books yet or paid much attention to the movie the first time around (ha!), but it reminded me of my surroundings; at the very heart of earth, something about the sacredness of creation that I could not truly understand. This land held secrets I couldn't find if I searched for years. How the winds on the lower lake seemed calm until a storm, complete with hail, rushed us to our car.

- Getting Chinese takeout, which felt so normal.

- Waterford and Wexford, we only went to Wexford, but for some reason the two are crystallized together in my mind. The hotel we stopped at on the way back from Wexford to eat lunch.

- After lunch, we stopped in Ferns - I don't know where it is, I just know that's its name - pulled over in the car because one of us spotted the ruins of a church in the midst of a green field, and a cemetery full of stones stained with age. It was cold and whipping wind, and I ran back towards the car from the far end of the stones, "Nana, Nana! I found the grave of a king!"

- A day out in Dublin: The peppermint foot scrub I bought because it seemed luxurious and smelled stingingly fresh, and I kept the empty tin in my bathroom drawer in Atlanta for at least two years afterward, and sometimes I would sniff it just to remember that I had actually been in Ireland. The name of the department store and restaurant, Kilkenny's, and how lemonade wasn't sweet, but strong. Cigarette smell floating. Buying Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the British version; it still has the Euro barcode on the back. Snapping photos of the colorful Georgian style front doors and - were we walking or driving? - standing in between two doors, a big beef of a man wearing a tight t-shirt shouted cheerily, "Eh, take me picture then!" The swans on the lake in the park where we stopped before dinner. Roly's Bistro, and the white clothed round table where we sat.

- That night, seeing Beauty and the Beast the musical at the Point Theatre on the River Liffey, and it was as if the movie had never even existed. The songs hit me all afresh, the musical interludes swept me up, the added numbers glorious in their depth and heat (example A). In those two hours, my eyes were starry, and I felt truly on the brink of something new - starting high school in the fall, thinking of all the boys I had ever liked, wondering what stories I could tell with pen and ink... What was next? What would happen?

- The last day: We saw the Book of Kells and the Long Room and I wrote postcards in smeary gel pens, half of which I never sent. Took a photo in front of the Molly Malone statue on Grafton Street. Went to the airport, and hugged our friends farewell. The plane wheels lifted off from ground of my ancestors and I thought, Ireland, my feet will touch your ground again.

On a late night six and a half years later, I remembered that moment, when rubber hit runway, carrying me to Erin once again, and I knew the green was there, even in the darkness.