Caffeinated Politics

There’s a certain morning each year when, no matter what is occurring or what the radio newscaster is saying, I simply stop and smile upon opening the window blinds. It always happens overnight on Lake Monona. The deep winter‑long silence of ice is just gone. Granted, it does not just (snap my fingers) disappear. The freeze doesn’t surrender all at once. It loosens in sighs and murmurs, a crack here, a widening seam there, until the whole surface is free of ice, as it was this morning. Perhaps if I had been outside late last night, I might have heard it whisper, “Alright then… I suppose it’s time.”

This year, before that magical moment, robins were bouncing on the lawn. Their confident arrival alerts me that they know something we don’t. Winter may still be sharpening one last storm in the wings (the forecasters are priming us up for a doozy this weekend), but the robins don’t mind. They’ve read the season’s true script. They know the sun is climbing higher each day, that the cold is losing its authority, that the earth is warming for their nest-building agendas.

Despite the predicted hours of 60 mph wind gusts and potential snowfall that will call the shovels up from the basement (where I placed them on Monday when it was 70 degrees at our isthmus home), it is just hard for me not to take heart from their winged optimism.

I wrote a column some years back when I really wanted spring to hurry up and arrive. Let’s get to the melting of the lake ice! I wrote of standing outside in a heavy jacket that I was tired of wearing. I said that the opening of the lake each year was like a book we’ve been waiting to reread. The air still bites with chill, but there is a sweetness tucked inside it now. The kind that hints at green buds on the maples, and the first brave blossoms.

Winter will toss us another storm or two, just to remind us of who’s been in charge, but we can meet it with a knowing smile. Because once the robins are back and the lake begins to breathe again, the season has already turned. The warmth is on its way. Green is coming. And spring, in all its soft and blooming insistence, is already knocking.

Sorry to stop this column…….but something needs my attention at the front door.