THE FORCE OF NATURE
March 8, 2015
Spring. Almost. Certainly it arrives earlier here than in New York. But no matter where and when she arrives she’s ruthless. How easily do we get caught in our romantic idea of this season; the season of rebirth? And yet it is as violent as all birth and comes with it fair share of death.
This week, the day after our trees had been planted, the clover seeded, and irrigation installed, spring howled like a woman in labor. Her water broke in torrents and we stood at the window watching rivulets carry new soil out of sight. And the wind! Starting on Wednesday evening, it blew for four days with a ferocity that tore limbs from trees and uprooted cypresses that had held firm for a century or more. And we are as helpless as newborns.
It wasn’t only trees that lost limbs this week. Mario lost a leg. Mario who’s worked the land all his life, the last three decades of it on the estate up the road where we taught and were married. We always thought of Mario as rooted in the earth, born of it. And now….
Mother Nature, she gives and takes, never more than in the spring when the survival of the fittest is put to the test. Watch her as she shakes the land awake. You’d better be ready when the alarm goes off or she’ll discard you like old bed linen. Was it the wind that drove one of the steers crazy this week, goring a younger one to death? Do we pattern ourselves after the seasons? I certainly feel riled and ruthless these days; one minute alive with new possibility, creative energy coursing through me, and the next caught in my own force of nature as I hack away at the dead bits; the moldering thoughts and stagnant attitudes.
Nature isn’t the only mother getting attention today: it’s Mother’s Day here in Italy or, more precisely, Women’s Day. I like that here you don’t have to be a mother in order to gain respect as a woman. In fact, it strikes me as amazing that in a country so fixated on the maternal, that the power of all women, young, old, married, single, mothers or not, is saluted.
The wind has died down considerably this afternoon but still lashes out in sudden outbursts as if to take the complacent by surprise. Indeed we cut our walk short this afternoon. Reaching the top of the hill we feel the wind lick inside our ears and scurry home to a pot of tea by the fire.
Joel celebrated 77 years on Friday. We spent two hours of his birthday in the hospital in Siena where the dermatologist examined a stubborn spot of skin cancer on his left leg and telling him that the topical medication isn’t working. Come April the knife will be wielded. Another little piece of the self whittled away. And yet how vital he is in this season of his life, a season I refuse to name.
On Friday, not satisfied with wind, nature added an ice storm to the mix causing a power outage in Florence, while here the wind continued its mischief, tearing the roof off of Silvia and Vincenzo’s woodshed. But our new trees held their ground. It will be another week before I know how much clover seed was washed away. Sun is forecast for the next few days and that which remains will start to push its three-leafed greenery through the soil. Of course, I’ll re-sow the bare patches, sticking my tongue out at Mother Nature behind her back, while she laughs behind mine.
In my strong moments, the ones that have forced my sap to rise for a 69th Spring, I don’t really care about winning. I just want to go forward with the best of intentions and let each day be its own reward. The seasons, like all man-made denominations of time, are folly. Life cannot be measured, quantified, or even justified, it just is. Mine, right now, is as of pollen blown across seas and continents, momentarily taking root in the Tuscany soil.
