View From a Prairie Home

by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist

When I flip the calendar to March, I immediately think spring. I am tired of winter, with or without snow. I am tired of the cold. Of the lack of color. Of the snow that sometimes linger, grey or black with remnants of those winter winds that carry dirt with them all the way from Iowa or even further away. And if spring doesn’t come, I am determined to pretend. I take away all the hearts from Valentine’s Day and put them in a tote in a closet in the attic. And then, I take out a big, green cardboard shoe box and bring it downstairs.

It contains multiple bunnies and tiny wooden Easter eggs. I love to take each item out of the box and remember its origin. Most are from Germany, since I spent many March days there with my students to help them learn the language in an authentic setting. We would travel around to see the many historic sites for a week with me as their guide and then they would attend German schools while staying with a German family. It was a trip of a lifetime for many of them and most of them would tell me later how much the trip defined who they were and could be. It was a stressful trip for me, being responsible for a group of teenagers; making sure they were safe while exploring a new and somewhat unfamiliar world. I also had to prepare detailed lesson plans for all the students left behind with a substitute teacher who often didn’t know German. But it was all worth it as I loved to see my students using the language I had taught them and exploring the culture that was so integrated with the language.

Anyway, the green shoe box contains so many memories and I now have time to ponder them as I prepare for spring on the prairie. After the bunnies are placed around the house, I take my clippers and go outside. I now have a long experience cutting branches to bring inside. If I don’t want them to sprout, I must paint them. Bare twigs with tiny eggs do look colorful and pretty. But this year, I yearn for green. In the past, I would search out tiny branches of lilacs. The disadvantage of those were that they would sprout, but then wither and die before I could properly enjoy them. So this year, I cut branches from some of our birch trees. Their leaves don’t sprout as fast, but they stay green longer. I find some vases, put the cuttings in water and hang the Easter eggs on the branches. Then I go upstairs where I have saved some pussy willows that I have dried. I put them in other vases around the house without water. Now, our old house looks like spring has sprung and I go around enjoying the sight and feeling grateful for the strong light of spring that comes through the many windows and brighten our days. The bright sunshine shows off how dirty our windows are, but washing windows is not on my radar screen today. I know it will happen and I also know my sweet husband will help. I take a moment to thank the Good Lord for him and how lucky I was to find him way back when he was a foreign exchange student at the University of Oslo, which is a story I have told, I am sure, multiple times.

As I mill around, a good friend stops by with a gift of a bulb garden. I put it in my bay window in the kitchen. I know that every day a new spring flower will bloom. First, the daffodils, and then the hyacinths, whose smell will linger in the whole downstairs. At the end the tulips will come. The sight of my bulb garden will greet me every morning as I come into the kitchen to make coffee. Looking at it, I will know that outside the leaves and grass will slowly turn the faint light green of springtime and that in my flower gardens, the tulips, daffodils and hyacinths will emerge in the soft air of spring.