Waiting on Spring

March 2021. 

Earth stood calm and unresisting while winter spit sleet against her breast. Snow fell on snow, piling deep and cold. Ponds in her pastures solidified. Trees towered barren and brown. Against this onslaught, Earth offered no rebuttal. Winter’s denial couldn’t negate the truth that fueled her steady calm; she was pregnant with pulsating life, and the hope of spring.

The sun was on her side, fending off winter, melting snow, and preparing her nurseries. Then, when she could no longer restrain the life throbbing within, her children were born. Passersby stopped to admire her firstborn crocuses and to photograph floral siblings blooming on the dogwood tree. Earth dandled magnolias on her knees and smiled broadly at the tulips playing at her feet. They were her offspring, all of them richly colored and exceptionally beautiful.

Spring had come.

Like the earth, I waited. I was pregnant with hope, yes, but I lacked Earth’s certainty that my winter would end. And then our basement stank like wet dog—we had no dog—and on another day, Walmart’s produce department smelled fermented and sickening. My confidence rose. That metallic taste in my mouth? Hope lay thick upon hope.

But the days until I could take a test stretched out like months and the week like a year. I passed the time by pairing middle names with the girl’s name we already had chosen. I researched baby carriers, disliking the bulky knot on the famed Boba wrap and chatting with a Konny representative on whether their sash stays in place without constant adjustments. I fingered tiny onesies at the store and considered fun ways I could announce our pregnancy to my family.

I multitasked all week. That is, I dreamed wildly about birth and babies while carrying out mundane responsibilities. Each evening, I collapsed onto the recliner, unusually but happily tired. This kind of tiredness could only mean one thing.

My hands shook when I opened the pregnancy test package. By now I felt so pregnant that I supposed I could spit on the test and get a positive reading. Taking the test was mere formality.

I followed package instructions, then laid the test aside without even looking at the window where the confirmation would appear. It would be best, I decided, to wait to look until both lines were bold and bright. I washed my hands and combed back my hair. I picked around at facial blemishes—something I had plenty of, considering the way my complexion had deteriorated in the last week. I scrutinized my teeth, wondering if they were yellowing with age. I even groomed my eyebrows. But I didn’t look at the tantalizing test. I would wait all three minutes. No, four, just to be safe.

When the parallel lines had ample time to go from baby pink to screaming scarlet to booming brown, I turned and looked, barely breathing. The results were in. A single line in screaming scarlet.

The test was negative.

Barren branches of the sycamore waved to me from outside the bathroom window and tapped a sympathetic staccato on the metal porch roof. A nest clung tenaciously to its branches. It too was empty. Empty and cold.

Spring had not sprung for everyone. Maybe next month it would be here. A gauze of hope laid itself thinly across the raw earth of my heart.

Spring always comes.

Or does it?

April 2023. 

Spring has come.