Spring Fling

T. S. Eliot began his seminal work, “The Waste Land” with this line: “April is the cruelest month.” When I was in college, we spent weeks debating this one line—what does it really mean? Why would April be cruel? Isn’t April actually one of the best months of the year? My opinion has always been that Eliot was exactly right. In that short phrase, he managed to capture the very essence of April.

Why is April cruel? Because she is a wanton temptress, offering us the feast of spring, then snatching it back when we reach for it. April flirts and teases, laying out a carpet of daffodils and tulips, then covering it with snow. April plays hard to get, winking at you with the bluest sky you’ve ever seen, through a filter of crabapple blossoms—blossoms that are so fragile and transient that the slightest breeze lifts their veil and scatters them into wilted piles under your feet. April feeds you the line that spring has finally come–you wake to a morning so full of sunshine that you paint your toenails pink, open the windows, and put grape hyacinths in a vase. The next morning, you’re back in your winter boots, painted toenails unseen, windows closed.

This April seems particularly cruel—the beautiful days are tainted by the knowledge that people are suffering and dying while the flowers keep blooming. We have to watch those beautiful days from indoors, and when we can go out, it’s quick. Furtive, almost. And masked.

To me, the very juxtaposition of these moments of suffering and blooming, of spring and winter, of death and resurrection, are what conspire to make April so beautifully cruel. Knowing that tomorrow’s snow will bury today’s daffodils makes me want to imprint their image on my heart. Thinking about the tragedy being wreaked by the coronavirus makes me hyper-aware of the many blessings I still have. April is always an exercise in faith, now more than ever: spring will come. The blue skies will last longer. The day will come when we’re able to hug the people we love and look into their eyes again–when we can stow away our winter boots and throw out the masks that make us look and feel like the walking dead. Better days are coming, my friends. In the meantime, look up. Listen. If you’re very still, you’ll start to hear it: spring, breaking.

Vivaldi composed a set of four concertos, La Quattro Stagione, which means “The Four Seasons.”  The first concerto is “Spring,” or “Prima Vera.”  In Italian, “prima vera” means “first green.”  To me, this is the very essence of spring, captured in music.