Opening the door for the morning dog walk today, I called to my husband, “I’m wearing sunglasses.”
“Okay,” he answered. “Good luck.”
It felt a bit like derring-do, after all the grey days we’ve had recently, but it worked out all right. True, clouds came to cover most of the sky while Rascal and I were out, but parts of it were still blue, and the overall light level was appreciable. Not coincidentally, there were more than the usual number of walkers and a runner or two, taking advantage of the weather and smiling as we passed each other. Michiganders in winter do not take sunshine for granted.
So are other living beings. The recent stretch of milder temperatures seems to have green-lighted the snowdrops. They’re always the first flowers, often popping up right through the snow. Also, did you know snowdrops are fragrant? That’s according to on-line sources. I’ve never knelt down in the snow to give them a sniff. Apparently, the scent is pronounced, the better to capture the attention of the first pollinators, of which so far there is no sign.
This was the first day the birds have been noisy, not counting the ones that are always noisy, like crows and Canada geese. Today, chickadees were singing, and there was a chorus of little finchy voices on our very own street. Bluejays were even singing, not screaming and carrying on as they so often do, but singing their liquid song that sounds like it incorporates bubbles.
And there were red-winged blackbirds trilling at the little no-name pond on Green Road. You could hear them before you could see them, but it was ever thus. Having grown up hearing red-winged blackbirds singing along our lake’s canal, my sisters and I associate the sound with a feeling of all being right with the world. As with the other birds and the snowdrops today, though, it seems a bit early.
My husband’s sisters grew up making their own music. Their mother was organist and choirmaster at their church, and she had them singing together at home, as well. Their voices blend the way only related voices do, and their early and long training is evident every time they sing. They can make an ad jingle beautiful.
Eleanore had the girls working together every day, much of the time around the task of washing dishes. I had privately shaken my head over the fact that that saintly woman had fed and cleaned up for a family of seven without the aid of a dishwasher when I learned, some years ago, that the house had had a dishwasher when the family moved in and that she had insisted it be removed.
Dishwashing was together time. Time for everyone turning her hand to the same task. Time for singing. Time for news of everyone’s day. Time for telling stories. Time for talk of matters spiritual. “And maybe time to do a few dance moves,” one of my sisters-in-law adds. They’re getting together this weekend to celebrate a birthday. ’Wish I could join them, but they are, alas, far away.
Sue and I went for a walk this afternoon and saw some nifty things. A few years back, there was a contest in town for designs for manhole covers. Great idea, I thought at the time. After all, there had been a contest for designs to paint on the water towers, and the winning entries were fabulous. Another contest sought artists’ designs for “wraps” for the traffic signal boxes downtown, with fine results. But I somehow missed any announcement of the manhole contest winners, and had never seen covers that looked anything but generic.
That changed today. Sue and I were walking where we have often walked before, and saw something new. In the asphalt was a circle of concrete around a manhole cover, one of the new designs, which depicts a woman paddling a kayak down the Huron River on a day with a dramatic sky. The contest had asked for designs that celebrate our city, and clearly got them.
Furthermore, whoever laid the concrete that surrounds the cover took pains in doing so. Swirl marks are brushed into the area of the circle, as if to celebrate the cover. Nearby is another design-contest winner, this one of a magnificent oak tree and its reflection. And this second manhole cover sits asymmetrically in a curved area of concrete, around which the swirling brushwork is a source of delight.
These covers can last eighty years. How lovely to live in a place that strives to make them beautiful. If only my sisters-in-law lived here, too.
9 February 2024