Take Heart! Bestir Ourselves!

March did not go out like a lamb this year, and April is struggling to make the best of it, not too sure what to do weatherwise.  The thunderstorm that ushered in the first of April was no joke, as my poodle made quite clear to me, hovering by my side even before I had actually heard the thunder.  Then a temperature drop reminiscent of the winter's polar vortexes was followed by a week of true-to-form April showers. 

It was about this time of year, with the days getting longer and the frost out of the ground, that Miss Edith and the Burrall sisters were feeling the call of Topsmead from their winter Waterbury home at 33 Church Street.  They had to be patient, however, and wait until Topsmead made it through "mud season" and "stick season" before they could load up the Packard for the trip up to Litchfield for the summer. 

The name "mud season" is self-explanatory to any knowledgeable New Englander, but you might ask, "Why 'stick season'?"  Well, take a look around as you walk the Topsmead landscape.  Right about now, the leaves on the hardwood trees are still in hiding, and all you see are their bare, stick-like branches.  To extend the explanation a bit, especially after this blustery winter, the ground is littered with a variety of sticks and branches that have been blown down.  Hence "stick season."

Right about now, I tend to agree with T. S. Eliot when he writes in The Waste Land, "April is the cruelest month, breeding/Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing/Memory and desire, stirring/Dull roots with spring rain." 

But take heart!  The spring rains are doing their job.  The lilacs of Topsmead are stirring.  The dull roots of the gardens around the cottage are stirring.  Our memories of our favorite corners of Topsmead are stirring.  The Topsmead docents' desires to throw off the furniture covers and throw open the windows of Miss Edith's beloved Topsmead cottage are stirring.
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And we can bestir ourselves in these cruelest times to look for the buds on the sticks, to trust that the spring rains will bring new life, to believe that there are new perspectives and reasons to hope stirring all around.
 
Margaret Hunt
BlogMistress