Nostalgia

This time of year has always been my favorite. The time when everything smells clean. When you open the windows every afternoon, even if it's only 40 degrees. When you get out your flats and flip flops and short skirts and run around with goose bumbs on your legs 'cause it really isn't quite warm enough. When you sit in the car and soak up sunshine with the windows down.

Last spring I spent in my old room. Leah on the bottom bunk, me on the top. I had minty green walls that magnified every bit of sunshine that came in the window and a purple and grey wallpaper border covered in hearts. My dresser was a softer version of the green on the walls, and bits of purple all over my room set of the tiny snatches of lavender in my cream and khaki quilt with the maroon flowers. I had always had the bottom bunk, but I was studying my life away and needed an internet connection, so I'd sit on the top bunk to study so that I could pirate the neighbors weak wi-fi signal. I'd open the window and leave the fan on and curl up in my blankets. Every body who walked by my door would come in and shiver and comment on how cold the room was, but it was spring, and the window had to be open.  Mom was in and out every few minutes, to tell me a bit of news, to tell me she loved me, to ask me to do something or go somewhere, to hand me a love note that she'd written for me, to bring me a glass of soda, or something yummy that had just come out of the oven, or just to say hi.

The spring before that I spent in the same room. I had the bottom bunk, but the walls were the same color, and other than the purple basket and the candle holders on the wall, the contents of the room were pretty much the same. Instead of studying I was sewing. All the time. I was glued to that machine. I'd sit there barefoot in front of the window with my toes turning blue and my fingers going numb while I worked away at denim patchwork skirts and sundresses for Leah and Jeri. The parakeets would be singing their hearts out in the next room and the house buzzed with perpetual motion. I'd be singing along with GLAD and Josh Groban and Rich Mullins on my iPod. Dad taught me how to drive, and I'd beg for errends to run just so I could get out and drive with the windows down.

The spring before that the walls were a light tan, the border was butterflies and violets. My battenburg lace curtains had been tea stained to match the walls almost 2 years before when Mom and Gramma had given my room a complete makeover while I was on a missions trip. They had painted, put the border up, tea stained the white, blue and pink quilt into a soft beige, stained the curtains, found me a new nightstand (actually, an antique one) and bought me a lamp. Before that I had had white walls, white curtains and was very bored with both. It was one of the most delightful gifts I ever recieved. They took my blah little world and made it beautiful. Since then I've been doing my best to learn to make everything around me beautiful. I don't always succeed, but I try.

So springs come and go. Bare toes on cold dirt, fresh mown grass, nests full of baby birds screaming away, the delightful shivers when you step from the chilly shade into the open sunshine. Sweaters and jackets in the mornings that get thrown aside and traded out for bare arms in the afternoon. Early morning garage sales, misty walks waiting for the sun to come up. Lunches of peanut butter and jelly on the back porch. Races through cold, wet grass at dusk while we catch fireflies.  Every year with the spring my birthday comes. For as long as I can remember we've had the windows open for my birthday party. One year I picked the fresh yellow blooms off of a bush in our front yard to decorate my white cake with.  One year I got a straw sun hat that I wore to death through the summer. Many times I've shared my parties with Aaron and Rachel, and never once have I minded. Birthdays are made for sharing. One year we were getting ready for our roadtrip to Colorado Springs, and I was given a new purse and a couple of new dresses that my Mom made for me.

This spring is so different from all the others. It's so beautiful, but even the best of changes are changes, and something of the old has to be missed. Last night it was the green walls and the pink candle that would burn night and day in my room that I missed, This morning it was the sun reflecting off of the gold framed mirror above my old dresser, right now it's my white stuffed rabit that I'm aching to go to the storage unit and dig out so it can sit on my hope chest where it belongs.

Josh bought me that rabbit for my 4th birthday. He used the last of his money to get me something special. I had tea parties with it, slept with it in the corner by my head, never ever put it away. The rest of my toys would go into the white whicker basket by my pink and yellow kitchen, under the poster of the two little girls walking down the road hand in hand, with their big straw hats, but that rabbit would sit on top of the basket. It's always been out. In recent times I've used it as a pillow on occasion, given it to crying little sisters on evenings when I was babysitting and they couldn't sleep, but always had it within sight.

This spring the mourning doves are refurbishing their nests in the stairway and getting ready to lay eggs. My windchime sings softly, hour after hour. The birdie sits in her cage an dozes when the sun hits the sliding door. I spend my lazy mornings snuggled up, listening to Quinn breathing softly beside me. Long before he wakes up he reaches for me and pulls me close to him. I listen to the birds outside the window, and feel the beautiful little kicks of our sweet somebody who is growing steadily in my womb. Most mornings he goes to class, and I get to work trying to make my world beautiful. It's easy in the spring. Keep it clean and open the windows and life is beautiful. But on Saturday mornings it's just us. No classes. No errends, unless we want them. Just us.

My birthday is Tuesday. We get to go in and get an ultrasound. Once we move I'll be decorating a baby's room with things that will define that somebody's springs and summers and falls and winters for the rest of this life. We'll be choosing a name that will be the most familiar sound to his or her ears.

I hope I make my children's springs as beautiful as my Mom made mine. She's always made my life beautiful, and I miss the simplicity of waking up and knowing the day would be a good one, 'cause she was gonna make it happen. I feel the responsibility to do the same for my husband, for my child, and for the children we have yet to meet. I want to make their world beautiful with smells of fresh bread, sounds of lullabyes about Jesus, times gathered around the table to read stories from the Bible, trips to the zoo, and the park, and Silver Dollar City, the constant supply of laughter and kisses and praises that she seemed to have. It's a legacy that will take a lifetime of commitment to continue, but it's one I hope to create for my family.

I hope that I can let this spring be as beautiful as Christ meas it to be. I hope that I can harness it, and magnify it, and let Him use it to make me new. I hope...because Christ is hope, and He can make this day, this spring, this year happen exactly as He wants them to.