It’s the same every year: mid-February, late afternoon, and the sun is beaming into the kitchen, strong and low, rendering translucent whatever it is you’re busy chopping at the counter—onions, red bell peppers, butternut squash. This is something you need, no matter how hard you’ve been trying to appreciate the months of “cozy” winter darkness. Not the radiant energy itself, but the sensation, the effect on the eye, an effect that shoots directly to the heart. Suddenly you’re reminded of garden plants, of grilling on the deck, of listening to the barred owls hoot while lying in the woods in the dark in a tent. This is what the future holds.
An exhilaration comes upon you in the midst of that
sparkling brilliance. Everyone feels it. Couples are passing by, walking the
dog, pushing the baby carriage. It isn’t just a promise of the future, it’s a
visceral feeling, now.
And this year the effect has been compounded by the fact
that snow is melting, streets are glistening, water is running along the
gutters. It gives the city an enchanted quality due to the reflections, the urban
sounds, and the balmy air, that would have been impossible to appreciate during
the holiday season, not to mention the recent murderous federal “surge.”
The other afternoon I spent some time cutting back the forsythias and the grey-twigged dogwood. Years of experience have taught me that you can’t really kill these things--I've tried--so you might as well be bold.
A few nights ago, we met some friends at a Venezuelan restaurant at 35th and Nicollet in south Minneapolis. I’d made a reservation for 5 p.m., though to judge from the website, no one else had made a reservation at all. I was hoping the place wouldn’t be deserted. We were seated at a corner table. It was perfect, except for the loud-speaker affixed to the ceiling directly above our heads.
When the server came by, I said, “You know, we all have
hearing aids. Do you think we could move to that table down at the other end?” Not
exactly true, but she understood and got the okay from on high.
The food was good and the low table-lighting added to the ambiance. But what impressed me most was how animated the clientele was. And how young. These were people from the neighborhood. Well, what did I expect? I had to remind myself that forty years ago we lived five or six blocks away ourselves, and this was our neighborhood.
The other morning we headed down to the Cedar Avenue Bridge to catch the morning light. And that same afternoon we went on a drive down around the lakes. The light was low to the west, but there were fishermen standing around on the ice in the middle of Lake Harriet. The ice itself looked gray and scuffed and lustrous, with pools of water reflecting the blue sky here and there. The potholes in the road were also filled with water--a constant challenge.
February light doesn't merely hold the promise of spring. It's an intrinsic good. It's free, and it's all the more pleasant and surprising for the fact that, unlike the speck of a comet or the fleeting dance of the Northern Lights, it spreads itself everywhere, morning and evening, day after day.
Posts
