The onset of Spring in the Northeast is marked by the blooming of the first flowers. Daffodils, crocuses, hyacinths. Usually, this occurs mid-March but this past winter, the high-40s/mid-50s weather that brings these blossoms came early in a surprisingly mild February. Valentine’s Day saw the first buds appear on the bank of daffodils that line my driveway. Like the unexpected reprieve from the usual snow, ice and freezing temps of winter, the sight of these early buds both lifted my spirits and worried me. Climate change, with its spikes of unseasonable warm winter weather, followed by a freeze, had killed the local peach crops in 2023, and this February “heat wave” made me fear these buds, too, would die before they ever bloomed. After all, we had a long stretch of winter to go. I resigned myself to this likeliest of fates. Next year, I told myself. Maybe next year.             

When the daffodils actually blossomed in the first week of March, I was cautiously happy: Well, at least I’ll enjoy them for however long they have. Then came a frost. Nighttime temps dipped into the low 20s for several days. Cold winds buffeted the garden at 20 miles an hour. The daffodils slumped, heads downward, and I thought, Okay, they’re over.

But the following week brought several days of bright sun. Despite the cold winds still blowing, the flowers seemed to lift in this welcome light.  At first, I thought it was just my wishful thinking, but as I checked them daily, I realized they were, in fact, not simply hanging in there but getting stronger. Then one morning after two days of rain, voila!, they looked great. No longer tentative, but hale and hearty! They even survived an early April ice storm. I recalled the poet Emily Dickinson’s famous verse:

Hope is the thing with feathers,
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops–at all.

Hope–the life raft we cling to in times of trouble.

Bad News on the Doorstep

The late winter weeks were not an easy time for me. In mid-February, my dentist informed me I had an infection in Tooth #31 that would require the tooth be extracted. Since the drug I take to build bone density carries a risk of jaw necrosis (meaning “death of the jaw”—not good!) for such procedures, no regular dentist wants to touch it. I had to schedule an appointment with an oral surgeon ASAP. But as we all know well, everyone is “scheduling out” for months in advance. After some gentle but steady pressure on my part, I was able to secure an appointment for the end of March. By mid-March, my tooth and jaw were really aching, but a round of antibiotics eased the pain. Just two weeks to go, I thought. I can make it. Everything will be okay.

And then I got a summons for U.S. District Court. Two months of on-call jury duty for May and June. The problem? Ed and I had booked flights and rented a flat in London many months earlier for—you guessed it—May. Ten-thousand dollars, non-refundable.  

I answered my summons online and pleaded my case. I got an email reply that same day. My service would be postponed until August/September. September—the month we were already booked to travel to Rome for our anniversary. I searched my summons papers for a phone number to call. Nada. Just an automated check-in line for jurors already on duty.   

I replied to the email that same afternoon. Happy, I said, overjoyed, I stressed, to do the jury thing in July and August. Or October and November. I’ve been summoned for jury duty 10 times in my life, I emphasized, and other than the summons during the dark months of COVID (when it posed a risk to Ed), I’ve never asked to be excused or postponed. Please. Please. PRETTY PLEASE!

No reply. I decided to give it a week. After all, people get busy.  

Hitting Bottom                                                                                                                                 

Four days later, I heard not from the court, but the oral surgeon. Could I come in today? The office had a cancellation and he could pull my tooth that afternoon—a week ahead of schedule. Yes! Sooner meant less risk of serious jaw infection.

The oral surgeon turned out to be excellent and I followed the usual “eat only applesauce/yogurt/pablum” post-surgery diet for a week. I was relieved, but the jury thing was still out there. I wrote the court a second time, mindful to include our previous correspondence, and crossed my fingers. A week went by, then another. Silence. Meanwhile, though the area around the pulled tooth was healing well, all kinds of pain was occurring in other teeth, my sinuses and the back of my jaw on both sides. The soonest my dentist could see me was April 11. Two…whole…weeks…away. More of a wait than I wanted but what can you do? I asked them to let me know if anyone cancelled before that date, and returned to my diet of soft mush, Advil—and hope.

Then in the early hours of April 2, I woke with a pain so intense in my left jaw, I couldn’t worry about or even imagine the future. April 11? In that moment, it felt like the 12^th of Never. Ed retrieved the ice pack—a gift of the oral surgeon—from the freezer. I wrapped it snug around my head and took two Advil.  

I was enjoying a light doze when the phone rang at 7:15 a.m. No one calls at that hour unless it’s important, so I jumped up and retrieved the phone from my dresser. It was the dentist. There’d been a cancellation. Could I come in now? There was no time for a shower, so I did a quick spot clean, brushed my teeth, and headed out the door. The upshot? Jealous of all the fuss the extracted tooth (Tooth #31) had received, Tooth #15 was now yammering for a root canal. My dentist set up an appointment with the endodontist for that same afternoon. Ed and I went to work in our usual coffee shop for a few hours, then headed 20 miles north to seek salvation. Three hours later and $1,800 lighter, I emerged painless.   

A Celebration and the Gift of Hope

Two days later, I celebrated my birthday quietly with Ed, watching movies and playing Scrabble, while the ice storm I mentioned up top raged outside. I was just glad to be pain-free. The next evening we had dinner out at a favorite local eatery, High Brow. Our town has never really recovered from The Plague restaurant-wise. Many places closed and those that remained open seem to largely survive through take-out orders. More than once, Ed and I have been the sole table in a restaurant, while people came and went, picking up their take-out food. But High Brow hops on a Friday night. Friendly staff. Excellent food. Always a lively crowd. It was a real celebration and it refueled my hopes. Hope for a world where people value and enjoy a communal life. If we can come together, we can support one another, solve our problems, take courage—and joy—in the knowledge that we are not alone.

Even a brief one-on-one encounter with another person can boost hope as I was reminded three days later when, out for a walk as the Total Solar Eclipse reached the Northeast, I stopped to chat with a young man who was viewing the phenomenon through a pair of special eclipse glasses. He asked if I’d like to take a look. The “black” moon with its fiery orange sun rays was indeed amazing. I thanked him and continued home. A five-minute exchange at most, but I’m convinced our mental health, happiness, hope depend on these human connections—big and small.    

When You Have Exhausted All the Possibilities, Remember This: You Haven’t (Thomas A. Edison)

So, the tooth was good—just waiting for a crown. The birthday was happy. The daffodils had been joined by a few tulips. But there was still the jury duty thing. Keeping to my long-standing mantra of “one disaster at a time,” I had let it go for a couple of weeks, simply checking my email daily in hopes of a reply. So far…nada. I would have to figure out the next step. Soon. Real soon.

The night after the eclipse, seeking some, any idea on how to proceed, I googled “postponing jury duty.” Scrolling through the results, I was excited to discover that one could request a specific postponement date on the state government’s website. Why had this not been mentioned on the summons? Or the original email I received from the Clerk of Court? I went to the website the next morning. I had my juror number, but you also needed the pin number from your summons. My summons had no pin number. Scrolling, scrolling, I discovered a helpline for answers in filling out your request. I called and got A Real Person! I explained my situation, the correspondence that had ended in limbo. “No problem,” this lovely person replied. “I’ll just schedule you for the week after you return from Rome.” Three minutes later, I had an email in my Inbox, confirming the new date. The stress of the past two months fell away in seconds, like the ice from the daffodils had done the week before. By the time I picked up my youngest from the train station that afternoon for a much-anticipated visit, my heart was light, joyful.

Hope, as Eternal as the Stars

I have written here about the stars on several occasions. How, sitting on my deck on a clear night, the sight of them fills me with hope. They are eternal. Whatever mess of things we mortals make down here, however stupidly, dangerously we risk the future of our planet and all its abundant life, the stars will survive. My stressful weeks from late February to mid-April happened to coincide with a long string of cloudy evenings. The stars were not in evidence just when I needed them most. But one night, I thought It’s okay. Though I can’t see them at the moment, they’re still up there, exactly where they should be. Obvious, I know, and yet profoundly comforting.     

I leave you with a haiku I composed in the shower the morning we “sprang ahead” to Daylight Savings Time on March 10:

Today the light’s one
Hour longer, the dark recedes,
Our hopes grow stronger.