The Winters of Spring

Anyone from Tennessee knows about blackberry, dogwood, and red bud winter.  These words describe the transition from one season to another, particularly the transition from winter to spring which details the ebb and flow from warm to cold, cold to warm, and finally to completely warm. It often takes a month or more to make this transition and during this time there is a great deal of complaining and dialogue about the process. In reality the same transition happens in the fall season, but interestingly, there are no names given to the fall process, or if there were, we did not use them in East Tennessee.


Like all their neighbors Mama and Aunt Ruby could have an hour conversation on any given day related to these 'winters'. These conversations usually began with Aunt Ruby's first of her three or more daily visits to our house.  Living across the road from each other on State Route 33 these two women had constant contact and worked together daily to get their farming done. Aunt Ruby would come flying in the back door her dress flapping in the cold wind saying, "Well it's blackberry winter alright cause I saw some blooms on the blackberry vines along the creek bank." Mama would respond with, "Yep, I think it is and what are you doing out in this air with nothing on but your petticoat and dress?" Aunt Ruby, not bothering to answer the question, just went on with her description of the cold wind and how she hoped this would not be a long winter spell.

Its now 55 years later and I find myself in Middle TN hearing many of the same comments about the winters of spring. The only thing that is different is this current generation does not know the exact definitions of each winter. Now the conversation begins with, "Is this another winter and how much longer will this last?" And most of these women are dressed in skimpy, too early for the season, dresses or summer shorts and tops that are flapping in the wind.

Lately I have come to believe these winters are a great metaphor for adaptions to life changes. Often the life span is broken into the spring (youth), summer (young adulthood), fall (middle adulthood), and winter (late adulthood).  These transition phases of human life are recognized and referenced as moving into a new season, but how many of us stop to consider the 'winters' process of our transitions? Do we see that going to a new phase of life has many cold spells or rude awakenings about our inability to do things. We also experience warm spells when things go better than expected and we begin to believe we really won't have to change. Do we acknowledge that we are in a new phase of life and realize that the choices we make about the upcoming phase have an enormous impact on how the transition turns out? 

The cold winds and rainy spells tell us that change is coming and we frequently find ourselves under or over dressed in our clothes from the former or upcoming season. We can be overdressed or under-dressed for any new life season if we fail to acknowledge life changes, if we insist that no changes are needed, if we fail to see that different clothing is required for this new season.


What new seasons are you entering and what winters of spring or fall are you trying to endure?  Are you making appropriate changes?