The Signs of Spring by Calynn Klohn

 

The Signs of Spring

By Miss Calynn

 

My favorite signs and symbols of spring are the first sight of green, and the subsequent sprouting of flowers— the resilient kind that can put up with sudden drops of cold and copious watering from the rain. I’m certain we all marveled in the Scilla that covered the forest around LifeWays! Another of my cherished spring things is the sound of birds chirping, much more cheery than the slow and somber winter calls, and alive with prospects of new life and welcomed warmth.

There is a quiet similarity in the turning of winter to spring and the growth of young children. In fact, if we split the years of our lives up into seasons, spring would surely be the first. As I’ve gotten to grow with the children at LifeWays during the colder months, I closely began to detect the sifting energy when those first purple-blue buds arrived. I heard the way Lena’s words formed into coherent names and labels. What was not long ago babble, has become an excited effort to name things like ‘necklace’, ‘shovel’, and of course the names of her cherished friends.            

I watched the way Owen dug through the dirt to find worms for each of his littler friends who needed a hand finding one, and respectfully setting them back into their dirt homes when it was time to go inside. And we celebrated the coming of new siblings into the world, born into a season of fresh soil, ready to tuck them in and guide them upward towards their sunny purpose!

There is a clear readiness I feel amongst the children for being outside and in the summer sun, but we know that there are still some necessary pieces of the spring season that are occurring. And any frustration we may feel in waiting for the temperature to turn, or the rain to pass, is identical to the feelings of our children as they trial and error their new skills. They may have a voracious readiness to excel and develop quickly, but there are certain vital moments in their process of learning that will feel frustrating, painstaking, and endless to them.

This is their spring season— a time of setting strong foundations, of making sure their garden soil is nutrient dense, and this invisible underground process is the very thing that will bud the flowers later in the spring and summer. And by the end of summer, I know that we will look back and marvel at the things that have sprouted and bloomed in our children’s lives.

May we as caregivers be like the chirping birds to our children— offering them pleasant song to work along to, sometimes incessantly singing the same chirp again and again until we hear it called back to us! But a sweet thing to listen to, regardless.