Fighting Spring

 

Our backyard skating rink has taken more of a beating from the weather this winter than from our skate blades. Between a mild February and the warm March sun, skating has not been on the schedule very often. But, on the night of March’s full moon, a chilly long range forecast gives me hope that we might be able to skate even once more if I just work hard enough.

It’s because of this hope that at 11:30pm, with the thermometer reading just below zero and after two days of solo parenting, I make the absurd decision to try to rescue the rink.

When the weather cooperates, backyard rink upkeep isn’t too complicated (or at least it doesn’t look too complicated from my perspective inside the house). Skate. Shovel loose snow off the ice. Flood the surface with a thin layer of water so that it’s ready for next time.

How hard can it be?

I zip up my winter jacket over my pajamas, don a pair of waterproof gloves, and slip my husband’s winter boots onto bare feet. After I retrieve the garden hose from the garage, I loop it over my shoulders and lug it through the mudroom to the backyard. 

Feeling confident I’ve made it this far, I click the nozzle in place and connect the hose to the outdoor water tap. When I turn it counterclockwise 360 degrees, I hear a rush, and the hose twitches as it fills with cold water.

Dragging the hose behind me, I walk across the yard and survey the rink. It’s cracking in places, covered in rough slush in others, and littered with fallen pine needles that warmed in this afternoon’s sun and melted crevices into the soft ice.

I know it can’t be revived, but I have to try something.

In a faux fur trimmed hood, oversized boots, flannel pants, and a fuzzy bathrobe that peeks out from the bottom of my jacket, I feel like a clown. Suspecting that the chances of reviving a backyard rink in March in Southern Ontario are non-existent, I feel foolish.

But still, I step over the boards that separate our snowy lawn from the ice surface and–in a defiant act of hope–shower the rink.

Standing in the middle of a frozen backyard, to the soundtrack of water splashing onto the ice, I look up through the strings of tiny lights we’ve suspended over the rink. I stare through the spindly branches of the sugar maple that stretch over the backyard and hold the lights in place. The night is still and inky blue. The sky is speckled with only the brightest of the Northern Hemisphere’s stars that the city’s smog and light pollution haven’t obstructed.

In the light of the Sugar moon, I see that the tree is adorned with buds that are swelling almost imperceptibly. The sap in its roots and trunk is waiting for the morning sun when it will flow up to even the twigs in its crown, defying gravity.

I spot an icicle hanging from a branch where the sap drips out of a notch in the bark made by an opportunistic squirrel that chewed through the roughest bark to reach the tree’s tender xylem for a treat.

It’s peaceful and it’s beautiful, but it also feels now like the absurdity of fighting spring. 

I wish I could end this story with a paragraph about the valiant efforts of bulky winter boots and down jackets thrown over fuzzy bathrobes holding onto winter for just a little longer. But that’s not an award for me to accept.

Instead, it ends with a steady drip, drip drip. Flowing sap. Melting winter. Hope. Spring.

The next morning, I check on my handiwork. The sun is high in the sky and already eating away at the ice by the time I’ve cleared the breakfast dishes. The rink looks worse than it did at midnight.

I’ve always associated this season of Lent with all creation groaning in despair and desperation, but maybe this season also drips with hope and sweetness. We know what comes next after all.

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This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Acceptance Speech."