Whipped Between the Beckoning and the Forbidding

The radio, of late, has been set on the '70's channel.  I'm not quite sure why.  I haven't been in an especially nostalgic mood.  Nonetheless, I've been enjoying the music.  I hear plenty from The Eagles, Jackson Browne and Earth, Wind and Fire.  There is an ample number of "one hit wonders" -- songs that I readily recognize by performers whose name I've long-since forgotten.  But I have especially enjoyed revisiting those early R&B sounds -- songs by groups like the Temptations and the O'Jays and the Spinners with their finger snaps, matching suits and choreography; groups I didn't really pay that much attention to back in their day, but whose music today I can only describe as "fun." 

I've been especially resonating in recent days with one of those songs in particular -- "Rubberband Man" by the Spinners.  The song is actually about a novelty musician, but it's the elasticity I've been feeling lately, stretching in one direction only to be boinged back in the opposite one. 

We are, I'll readily admit, still firmly within the embrace of winter.  Having begun in earnest some time in late November, our last average freeze date is April 26.  Sitting here in early March, we still have several weeks to go.  But weather is a mercurial phenomenon, especially in these climatically challenged days.  This winter we have gone from 50-degrees above zero to double-digits below overnight.  We've had no snow, only to be buried beneath blankets of it several days running.  It's been hard to know what to expect.


But last week we had a stretch of mildness.  Coats drifted away into the closet.  We soil blocked and sowed seeds in trays and nestled them in the greenhouse.  In the chicken yard and field, residual snow melted away into mud that, itself, eventually dried.  Unable to resist the sunshine and anxious to make garden progress, I gassed up the walk-behind tractor and went to work on a targeted piece of ground adjacent to the existing garden.  A plot something like 20-feet by 72-feet, I tilled and plowed my way into 5 new raised beds and eagerly ordered additional seeds to populate it. 

And then yesterday it snowed. 

All day. 

Multiple inches.

The temperature, though colder than prior days, was yet tolerable; but having stretched our way forward into spring, we have rubberbanded back into the throws of winter with gloved hands and coats retrieved. 

Looking at the forecast ahead, we will see still more of this slingshotting rhythm -- whipped between the mild and the mess, the beckoning and the forbidding.  I am, indeed, the "rubberband man", stretching back and forth between the seasons. 

But that is nothing new.  I routinely ride that rubberband between hopes and memories, imaginations and recollections, passing through present reality on the way and pausing just long enough to drink in the wonder of what is...

...and to plow a little more fresh ground.  It can be a little dizzying, but all in all, it's not a bad trip.