Rebirth

College of Charleston
12:15 pm, March 19

It’s cool out here in the garden at the college. There’s a nice breeze blowing. It was supposed to get up to 87 degrees today, but there’s no way it’s going to do that.

Normally, I sit by the waterfall at the goldfish pond, listening to flowing water and pretending I am in some secluded woodland glen, but today I am seated next to a long row of azaleas in bloom. I’m watching a bee gather nectar about two feet from me. I can hear them buzzing. Warmth and spring and bees buzzing and a gentle wind. It could not be much pleasanter outside than it is now.

These are the azalea varieties that conjure up vivid memories of my home in New Orleans, and of spring in the South. The flowers are pale pink with one of the petals in each bloom filled with splashes of darker pink coloration. With the sunlight shining in back of them, one can see the delicate tracery of fine pink veins through which water and nutrients construct the exquisite flower. In the sunlight also, the petals become semi-transparent, filled with thousands of tiny sparkling crystals.

We had a huge plant just like this one in our backyard in New Orleans. It must have been eight feet tall. And, I can remember peering intently at the flowers during their peak bloom time, and rejoicing (as much as an oft-troubled and preoccupied teenager was capable of feeling truly happy) during that annual rite of spring.

Those spectacularly beautiful azaleas in bloom every March were as much a symbol of hope as of the new season itself. For spring is always a time of hope.

This afternoon as I sit here with a mild sun illuminating the complex internal arrangement of these flowers, I sense as never before the wondrous season of rebirth that is spring. It makes me happy and forces the perils and dark news of the world into the background, for a time, anyway.

The wind is picking up. The purple blooms of wisteria are filling the top of the trellis nearby with additional color. Directly above me, birds are flying to and fro. The pear tree will soon be covered in tiny white blossoms. They are just emerging now along with new-green leaves.

I could let the afternon unfold in one long and increasingly relaxed and drowsy reverie, but my lunch hour is almost over, and I must reluctantly leave this little bit of paradise on earth.