ALL is NEW AGAIN

Spring means the Cat Plant, the ORIGINAL Cat Plant has started to bloom. He blooms and thrives in the dirt. In his pot. 

All is new again...

"Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?" "It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine." -F. H. Burnett. (The Secret Garden)

I remember spring. Long ago it meant a crisp new Easter dress and black shiny shoes with lace socks. Yuck. 

It meant mud puddles and wearing that new Easter dress to smack around in the mud. 

Smack! Smack! Rain and mud falling everywhere. Loads of fun.

My father had passed away in the spring. In March. I had been given this new dress. I hated it. It was all ruffles with ribbons and bows. Yuck.

My mother made it. She started it before he died. It took her ages to finish it later.  

White lace with pink bows. Double yuck. Smack! Smack! The mud flew.

"Spring is here and my old joy blooms in the world." -Steve Scafidi

She sewed that dress  in the wee hours. All tucked and hand stitched. While she waited for news about him.  And it came.

And when he was gone, she was very brave and faced the world.

And made me wear that awful dress. It  made noises as I walked. Scruffle Scruffle it went. Scritch Scritch.

"Life is a mountain. Your goal is to find your path. Not to reach the top." -Maxine Legace

When my mother saw me..... Covered in mud. The new dress looking forlorn....

She didn't say much. She was very quiet. She shook her head and sighed. She took me by the hand and led me inside. 

Later she took me out to buy a new dress. One that didn't go Scritch Scritch or Scruffle Scruffle. The one she had made vanished into thin air.

Twenty some odd years later, my mother passed away, the same day in the spring  as my dad. I found that once new dress . In a box. In her closet. It looked clean and crisp. Like new. Like it did the one spring day I wore it.

That day of mud and rain . That day in the spring. When all was  new again.... 

“Everything is made new in the spring. Springs themselves are always so new, too. No spring is ever just like any other spring. It always has something of its own to be its peculiar sweetness.”― L.M. Montgomery

Sweet Simon

Photographs 2021