The Green Mile ... Er, 25 Acres

Vivid greens—-lemon lime ferns; rich, forest green pine branches tipped with tender green; apple green maples, oaks, and poplars—-suddenly crowd the woods. Frances looked out the window at a nearby maple this morning. Bright green light reflected off the vast expanse of each leaf and bounced into the room.

“Wow, those leaves are big!” Frances said, “Have they always been that big?”

“No,” I replied smugly, “Not since last year.”

They DO look huge. “HAVE they always been that big?” I wonder after she’s gone.

All this green is unexpected. Overwhelming. Still, during the transition from winter to spring green is a promise hidden in the trees and plants and dirt. The gradual transformation from bare branch to bud to leaf unfolding doesn’t happen overnight.

A new editing client who works as a doula (birth assistant) told me on the phone yesterday that “transition” is a legitimate part of the birthing process. It’s a short period of time, she said, seven to ten minutes when the woman may shake and vomit. It’s too late for medication but too soon to begin pushing. Stuck, almost every woman giving birth says she can’t do it, said my client. After this brief phase is over the pushing begins, followed by the birth.

An apt metaphor: Like a pregnant woman engaged in nine months of gestation who brings her babe into the world, Mother Earth goes through a similar cycle. Just when I think that spring, then summer, will never arrive it slides into view like a baby’s head breaching the cervix.

The natural world is transformed. I hungrily gobble up greens, inhaling the sights, sounds, and gradations of color. When I glance out the window, a Phoebe pumps its tail up and down as it perches on a wire cage encircling a bleeding heart. From another angle I spy a forget-me-not nodding its flowery blue face. But now, NOW, all is surrounded by green. I feel the way I did at the birth of a friend’s second son. I’ve just witnessed a miracle.