Tag: Springtime

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Springtime, by Ricky

It is written that in the springtime a young man’s heart turns to romance and love. Who are we kidding? It turns to sex. Romance and love may follow, but not always. To be completely honest, once puberty strikes, a male’s mind (not heart) turns to sex all year long. Any season is highly conducive for the event to be accomplished.

Unfortunately, I am no longer young enough or my heart strong enough to enjoy springtime in the Rockies, except for the 1942 movie. So instead, my heart and my mind take flights of fancy. Fancy this or fancy that or just fancysizing that I am young again revisiting the happy times and events of my past. Or, perhaps I should say the way way past.

Nonetheless, it really is spring and if my autumn, if not winter, memory was any better, I would probably be making a fool of myself while walking down the sidewalk. How? By fancying that set of broad shoulders, those tan legs, cute faces, kissable pouty lips, and gorgeous blue eyes (no offence to you brown and hazel eyed people it is just that I like blue) and flirting with a tall, dark, and handsome server at the Irish Snug. Oh. Wait a minute, that last one I actually do. So maybe my memory is still a summer memory, but I am just as foolish.

© 16 April 2018

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Springtime, by Gillian

In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours. 
– Mark Twain

And I thank you for that, Mr. Twain. Thanks for telling it like it is – that Springtime is a sneaky, unpredictable little critter full of unpleasant surprises. T. S. Eliot wrote of April being the cruelest month, but most poets wax lyrical over the ‘rebirth’ that is the Spring, but they tell only half the story. More reliable is the old adage that if March comes in like a lamb it goes out like a lion, or vice versa. The old folks, tied much more closely to the seasons than many of us today, knew just how unreliable Springtime can be. In the England of my childhood those April showers so romantically trilled about in song had a bad habit of coming in one long shower beginning shortly after the New Year and ending temporarily for a few days in late July.

Arriving in sunny Colorado in 1965, I was welcomed by a seemingly endless Fall of clear days under a deep blue sky. Then, suddenly, one day winter arrived and the weather remained pretty cold and snowy for a couple of months, then suddenly one day the temperatures shot well above seventy and stayed there. The birds sang, early daffodils and tulips poked out their heads, buds appeared on the trees. Spring, I believed, had arrived. Wrong! A huge cold front moved in, temperatures plummeted, blossoms froze, flowers struggled to breath under three feet of snow. Of course, I now know that that is standard Springtime procedure around here, but that first year of my Colorado life it sure did take me by surprise. That ‘Springtime in the Rockies’ that we sang about in grade-school was even more given to shock and trauma than that Springtime in England so beloved of poets.

Contained in the lyrics of the Simon and Garfunkel song, A Hazy Shade of Winter, is a reference to ‘the springtime of my life’. I somehow missed mine; at least the first time around. Not surprising; I was stuck in that hazy shade of winter. Not that I was unhappy in the first four decades of my life, before I came out to myself. I just wasn’t there, which hardly lends itself to happiness or unhappiness. There was someone playing my part, but I didn’t care whether she was happy or not. She was not me and so signified nothing. And so I continued in that hazy shade until suddenly, about midsummer to continue the seasonal metaphor, I burst out into the sunshine – and entered my Springtime. I guess because I flunked the first one by my complete absence, I was forced to do it over. And I did not flunk this one. I blossomed. I bloomed. I unfurled my petals and felt the sun enfold me in it’s warm caress. I felt no fear. I was free to discover my own true beauty and to display it to the world. Maybe there would be some cold rain, some damaging winds, maybe I would struggle to survive under a snow drift, but I would survive to thrive in the summertime of the new me.

And so I must apologize to all those poets and songwriters. They have it right. There really is a magic in the Springtime air. Ellis Peters writes that ‘every spring is the only spring – a perpetual astonishment.’ She describes, perfectly, my life since I came out; one of perpetual, breathtaking, astonishment at my joy in life.

Continuing in A Hazy Shade of Winter –

…. Look around
The grass is high
The fields are ripe
It’s the springtime of my life
Seasons change with the scenery
Weaving time in a tapestry ……

And it occurs to me that one of the many blessings of aging is the ability to look back and see so clearly the seasons of our lives, and that time does, indeed, weave a tapestry; a tapestry design which we cannot see as we live it. Only when we look back does the picture become clear. We are finally able to see, and to revel in, our own life’s tapestry.

© April 2018

About the Author

I was born and raised in England. After graduation from college there, I moved to the U.S. and, having discovered Colorado, never left. I have lived in the Denver-Boulder area since 1965, working for 30 years at IBM. I married, raised four stepchildren, then got divorced after finally, in my forties, accepting myself as a lesbian. I have been with my wonderful partner Betsy for thirty years. We have been married since 2013.

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Springtime, by Phillip Hoyle

I knew the childhood chant, “April showers bring May flowers” long before I learned, “In Time of Silver Rain.” Langston Hughes wrote the poem; I learned it as a song when I was twenty-one and newly-married, an undergraduate studying theology and music. It seemed the springtime of my life. The Poet said it this way: “In time of silver rain/The earth/Puts forth new life again.”

For years I was amazed that the church’s celebration of its main stories—the death and resurrection—were so attached to geography. I’m not thinking of Jerusalem in Israel but rather of Earth’s northern hemisphere. Easter symbols were springtime symbols. Lenten preparation took place at the time of lengthening days. Easter symbols sported flowers and eggs and sunrises. Of course, that made a kind of sense to me, but what would religious life in the southern hemisphere make of the shortening of days leading up to the same events preached and celebrated in the north? What effect would Easter in the fall have on its meaning down there? (I saw a postcard from Brazil of Santa Clause riding a surfboard.) The questions seemed real to me.

In springtime I now appreciate most the warming trend, the eventual return to wearing shorts and sandals, eating out of doors, and playing in longer daylight hours. I don’t look forward to the rebirth of weeds I’ll have to pull or Japanese beetles that will go to war in the vines, flowers and garden, or the squirrels that will eat the tomatoes and winter squash. But still there is a kind of positive magic in longer days, green grass, shade trees, even suntans.

Yesterday I was trimming back some bushes that had barely begun to leaf out and raking up leaves deposited in hard-to-manage corners of the yard. Jim has been at it for weeks. I don’t do much yard work but do have my specialties, and I’m back to work—applying sunscreen, getting out summer clothes, packing away the flannels, corduroys, and sweaters. It’s spring. Enjoy the great out of doors or just the backyard. Clean it up. Invite over the neighbors for grilled specialties. Talk over the fence where it’s not too high. Socialize. Bring things alive. Yes.

Yesterday I walked in my Birkenstock Arizona sandals, ones I had not worn for months. They began irritating my feet and I remembered I hadn’t worn them long last fall. They weren’t really broken in. Then my left knee—the better one—started screaming at me like the right one often does. I realized here in spring I am deteriorating. And we need more, much more silver rain and soon. I wondered if when my knee quits, will I get one of those electric buggies. (One friend called his the electric chair.) If so, I’m sure I’ll decorate it with flowers and carry my rainbow colored umbrella holding onto the hope for silver rain and new life.

© 16 April 2018

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com

 
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Springtime for Hitler, by Ricky

It is written that in the springtime a young man’s heart turns to romance and love. Who are we kidding? It turns to sex. Romance and love may follow, but not always. To be completely honest, once puberty strikes, a male’s mind (not heart) turns to sex all year long. Any season is highly conducive for the activity to be sought after.

Unfortunately, I am no longer young enough or my heart strong enough to enjoy springtime in the Rockies, except for the 1942 movie. So instead, my heart and my mind take flights of fancy. I fancy this or fancy that or just fancysizing that I am young again revisiting the happy times and events of my past. Or, perhaps I should say my way way past.

Nonetheless, it really is spring and if my autumn, if not winter, memory was any better, I would probably be making a fool of myself while walking down the sidewalk. How? By fancying that set of broad shoulders, those tan legs, cute faces, kissable pouty lips, and gorgeous blue eyes (no offence brown and hazel eyed people, it is just that I like blue) and flirting with a tall, dark, and handsome server at the Irish Snug. Oh. Wait a minute, that last one I actually do. So maybe my memory is still a summer memory, but I am just as foolish.
© 16 Apr 2018

About the Author

I was born in June of 1948 in Los Angeles, living first in Lawndale and then in Redondo Beach. Just prior to turning 8 years old in 1956, I began living with my grandparents on their farm in Isanti County, Minnesota for two years during which time my parents divorced.

When united with my mother and stepfather two years later in 1958, I lived first at Emerald Bay and then at South Lake Tahoe, California, graduating from South Tahoe High School in 1966. After three tours of duty with the Air Force, I moved to Denver, Colorado where I lived with my wife and four children until her passing away from complications of breast cancer four days after the 9-11 terrorist attack.

I came out as a gay man in the summer of 2010. I find writing these memories to be therapeutic.

My story blog is TheTahoeBoy.Blogspot.com

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Color Truth, by Eym

Rainbows display more colors than we may ever know.  As with human beings, the parade of true
colors in nature out marches the imagination of anyone.
Some sort of green tulip leaves now flop upward above the dull yet
crunchy brown dirt.  They pose near a
plastic white fence my dogs and I pass.  We
walk by them into many shades of gray pavement. 
My little pals reveal shiny ebony with trim of yummy caramel tan.  Tires, like shoes on cars, stand there.
Though also black, tires show a different tint next to my short dog boys.  For some reason the cars perching in their
stalls display shades of gray pavement.
I do not understand why any safety minded person would make cars the same
color as pavement or cement roads.  Perhaps
some gone-wild logic of marketing believes that pavement gray cars look
convincingly more road worthy.  Maybe we
actually need to hide from a hoard of unseen sky marauding aliens that peer down
at us as we travel about.  Both of these
angles seem to overlook the obvious interpretation I make.  It is harder to safely see gray cars on gray
roads.
Amid my gray worry, I must admit I have never walked into any of these
gray cars resting there in parking lot 3. 
This suggests that even in plain ole boring gray the variety of colors
out runs my imagination.  The challenge
of trying to match greens while in art school served to restate the same
humbling truth.
By standard description our rainbow offers only six colors as it glows
against the special backdrop of generous rain clouds.  This short sided summary leads us to miss a
good deal of natural wonder.  Springtime
will soon give us new encouraging colors. 
Could it be that part of this surprise, year after year, stems from the
unrealized diversity of true colors in flowers.
It is always springtime when we are really getting know another person,
or when we are becoming the person we truly can be.  Just like flowers and rainbows, an amazing
variety of true colors unfold in a lovely endless surprise of creation.
© Feb 2016

 

About the Author

A native of
Colorado, she followed her Dad to the work bench to develop a love of using
tools, building things and solving problems. Her Mother supported her talents
in the arts. She sang her first solo at age 8. Childhood memories include
playing cowboy with a real horse in the great outdoors. Professional
involvements have included music, teaching, human services, and being a helper
and handy woman. Her writing reflects her sixties identity and a noted
fascination with nature, people and human causes. For Eydie, life is deep and
joyous, ever challenging and so much fun.