The Urge
June 16, 1999
Ah spring time—the only pretty ring time!
I don’t think enough research is being done on the cyclical nature of our urges. Shakespeare celebrated the desires of lovers in “As You Like It”—spring, ring, it worked for him. For me, I get an uncontrollable urge to garden. I love to root around outside in spring. It rains and automatically I dig, plant, dream and imagine exotic vegetables, colorful bouquets. I design intricate flower beds; I chase those baby weeds as if they were the sins of the past being rooted out of my life.
Never, ever, once in my life have I had any desire to weed in July—but in May, it’s a compulsion.
In summer I’m seduced into thinking that the grass will always be green, my toes will never be cold, and the long, lazy days will stretch ahead of me forever. Summer is a tall cold glass of lemonade, a hammock, kids at the pool and me with a “beach book.” I can’t imagine working in July—July is vacations. (However, I don’t always tell this to my kids. Summer, at least at first until they are subdued, is “Mow that lawn! Pull them weeds! No, we aren’t driving to Las Vegas, we have a family reunion!)
In September, I have never failed to be deceived by the siren call of the harvest. I can tell myself 1000 times: “Don’t start cooking, you’ll eat and eat and gain back what little weight you gardened off in the summer.” But by October I’ve brought out all the cookbooks and I’m hip deep in soups and stews, cobblers, pies and mashed potatoes. And calories I will never need to burn if I were to face seven years of hard luck and famine.
And isn’t it odd that when it rains even people with the work ethic of ants suddenly want to curl up with a good book or an old movie or stretch out on the couch and doze? Rain is nature’s way of saying “take a break.” Unless of course you’re in Seattle.
The March wind has always made me want to run. I remember racing down the sidewalk in my saddle shoes thinking I was the fastest ten year old alive.
In spring, I can wake up in the morning and feel like it’s a normal thing. I can rise up early in spring because it’s bearable. In January, waking up is akin to come out of the cave. I hibernate with the animal world only to find that my family’s expectations remain unduly high. They want food, laundry and conversation at the very least. I’m like a car without a carport. Winter seems unfair.
My immediate problem as an adult is that I’m compelled to clean and throw out in spring. Every now and then I even find myself in front of a closet in which I realize that nothing NEEDS to be thrown out but I’m still overcome with the desire to make things go away. I must fill huge black plastic garbage bags with old towels and worn out, see-through sheets. My inner matriarch commands.
It drives my husband crazy—he feels the way those people on the weather channel look standing on the ditch banks in floods. He hates to throw away anything and by June he’s begun to conduct secret searches through the trash can. It becomes a deadly game to see if we can outwit one another. I hide, he seeks; paint cans with a quarter inch of paint at the bottom; a huge bag of pin-nut-filled pine cones that no one, including him, is ever going to eat if we started eating right now and keep on going through the entire millennium; old suitcases; nuts and bolts and plugs and hinges and heirloom AAA batteries. He takes them out to the garage and tries to hoard them hoping I’ll go away.
But every year the hunt goes ruthlessly on. My eye restlessly seeing new places to clean. This year it’s the attic in the garage.
I’m coming closer, honey.
He’s going to have a fit!
Ah spring time—the only pretty ring time!
I don’t think enough research is being done on the cyclical nature of our urges. Shakespeare celebrated the desires of lovers in “As You Like It”—spring, ring, it worked for him. For me, I get an uncontrollable urge to garden. I love to root around outside in spring. It rains and automatically I dig, plant, dream and imagine exotic vegetables, colorful bouquets. I design intricate flower beds; I chase those baby weeds as if they were the sins of the past being rooted out of my life.
Never, ever, once in my life have I had any desire to weed in July—but in May, it’s a compulsion.
In summer I’m seduced into thinking that the grass will always be green, my toes will never be cold, and the long, lazy days will stretch ahead of me forever. Summer is a tall cold glass of lemonade, a hammock, kids at the pool and me with a “beach book.” I can’t imagine working in July—July is vacations. (However, I don’t always tell this to my kids. Summer, at least at first until they are subdued, is “Mow that lawn! Pull them weeds! No, we aren’t driving to Las Vegas, we have a family reunion!)
In September, I have never failed to be deceived by the siren call of the harvest. I can tell myself 1000 times: “Don’t start cooking, you’ll eat and eat and gain back what little weight you gardened off in the summer.” But by October I’ve brought out all the cookbooks and I’m hip deep in soups and stews, cobblers, pies and mashed potatoes. And calories I will never need to burn if I were to face seven years of hard luck and famine.
And isn’t it odd that when it rains even people with the work ethic of ants suddenly want to curl up with a good book or an old movie or stretch out on the couch and doze? Rain is nature’s way of saying “take a break.” Unless of course you’re in Seattle.
The March wind has always made me want to run. I remember racing down the sidewalk in my saddle shoes thinking I was the fastest ten year old alive.
In spring, I can wake up in the morning and feel like it’s a normal thing. I can rise up early in spring because it’s bearable. In January, waking up is akin to come out of the cave. I hibernate with the animal world only to find that my family’s expectations remain unduly high. They want food, laundry and conversation at the very least. I’m like a car without a carport. Winter seems unfair.
My immediate problem as an adult is that I’m compelled to clean and throw out in spring. Every now and then I even find myself in front of a closet in which I realize that nothing NEEDS to be thrown out but I’m still overcome with the desire to make things go away. I must fill huge black plastic garbage bags with old towels and worn out, see-through sheets. My inner matriarch commands.
It drives my husband crazy—he feels the way those people on the weather channel look standing on the ditch banks in floods. He hates to throw away anything and by June he’s begun to conduct secret searches through the trash can. It becomes a deadly game to see if we can outwit one another. I hide, he seeks; paint cans with a quarter inch of paint at the bottom; a huge bag of pin-nut-filled pine cones that no one, including him, is ever going to eat if we started eating right now and keep on going through the entire millennium; old suitcases; nuts and bolts and plugs and hinges and heirloom AAA batteries. He takes them out to the garage and tries to hoard them hoping I’ll go away.
But every year the hunt goes ruthlessly on. My eye restlessly seeing new places to clean. This year it’s the attic in the garage.
I’m coming closer, honey.
He’s going to have a fit!
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