Listening For Spring

I'm a country girl in the spring. (The rest of the year I really appreciate being only a short jog from the grocery store, Home Depot, and the local movie-rental place).

There is something about opening your back door (when you live in the country, as I no longer do), and hearing nothing. No car horns, no passing traffic, no intense train noises, no fighting neighbors . . . just quiet. And in the spring (and by spring I mean February through May), the quiet is amazing because it is so full.

I grew up in the country and as much as I despise the length of Minnesota winters, come February, I fall in love with this bitter north country all over again. February marks the official beginning of spring. Not by the calender—spring equinox doesn't arrive until the third week in March. But in February, things start happening.

I used to stand just outside the back door in the quiet of February nights when I lived outside city limits, and hold my breath, listening. The quiet absorbed the sound of my heart beating and the wind catching the naked trees, rattling them against each other. Finally the sound I was waiting for would boom across the wide stretch of open field behind my childhood home . . . "Hoooooo. Hooo, hoo, hoo- hooooooo . . ." A Great Horned owl. And then another answering back. It was only then that I would release my held breath in a single stream and grin. It was official. Spring was here. The owls were nesting.

Here in town, I can't hear them. Good grief, I can barely hear myself! There is just too much noise, outside my house, inside my house, inside my head . . . But the other night, Caleb and I came home after dark, and tipping his little head back, he gazed up at the night sky and the few bright stars that managed to glimmer through the light pollution.

"Mommy," he said in wonder, "stars!" And I watched him staring up at them for a long time—knowing that this was the first time he had seen them, really seen them. And I tried to recall the last, first time I had noticed, really noticed anything for the first time.

I can't stand out my back door and hold my breath waiting for owls this spring, and I have not done so in quite some time now. But maybe someday I will be able to share that with my son . . . until that day I am doing my best to pay attention to even quieter sounds of life arriving . . . my unborn daughter's heartbeat, my son's quiet breathing as he sleeps, my husband's whistle as he shovels the driveway.

It's February, and here in town things are kind of ugly and cold . . . but spring is coming. I can hear it.