(HOST) Just when it begins to feel like spring may never return, commentator Deborah Luskin’s faith is renewed by something that’s been stored in the cellar.
(LUSKIN) Every year, just after Christmas, my husband brings the amaryllis bulbs up from the basement. When they arrive upstairs, they look like nothing more than pots of dirt. And every year, it looks as if the bulbs have died, and the string of luck we’ve had, carrying these tropical flowers from one year to the next, has run out. But we’re learning better.
Some of the bulbs are several years old, and some are babies that have sprouted from the parent bulbs we’ve kept going for nearly a decade. Despite years of repeated success, the emergence of the first green shoot from the knobbly tuber, is always a magical moment. The narrow leaf tonguing its way out of the soil inspires us to rejoice as if we’d been keeping watch over a loved one whose fever has broken after a long and despairing vigil during an influenza pandemic of the last century.
"It lives!" we cry. "The amaryllis is back!" we rejoice. We move the flowerpot from the ledge behind the woodstove to the table in front of the sofa, so we can marvel as the green stem reaches up, its tip fattening into a pregnant bud from which the flower will eventually unfurl. Rubbery, green leaves pop up along side the flower stem. What had been a pot of dirt now looks like hope itself, promising growth, flowers and perfume.
By late-January, the swollen bud opens a crack, revealing a pink petal curled like a newborn. What is only a promise at breakfast is a full-fledged petal by dinner, and by lunch the next day, we have a flower in full bloom.
Every year, we’re stunned, not just by the beauty of these flowers, but also by our own thirst to see vegetable growth in the middle of the winter landscape, with its whites and grays and long hours of dark night.
Invariably, this prompts us to complete our seed order and start plotting our vegetable garden. Witnessing the amaryllis revive itself renews our faith in spring. It reminds us to eat our vegetables – the one’s we resented blanching in the heat of July, but must finish before the beans are upon us again – as surely they will be. We remind ourselves that now is the time to empty the freezer and to make use of all that we’ve preserved.
The amaryllis forces our noses up from our winter reading. We notice the returning light and the long pink moments in the late afternoon. Again, we bear witness as the earth slowly tilts back to the sun.
Oh, I know there’s more snow and cold yet to come. I welcome it! I’m not quite ready to shrug off the great rest that is winter. For I know as surely as the amaryllis bloom will wilt, spring will come, and the hard work of preparing for next winter will begin again.