Simple Things/ Lang Kenneth Haynes

Best days: Spring
   I’m just about always in a nostalgic mood, but the change in season accentuates this tendency. Winter is already history to my way of
thinking. I will ignore the cold from this point on, intentionally misplace my gloves and put away my I’ll regret these actions. There is more
cold weather ahead. But I’m beginning to think that a collective desire for warmer weather is required to make the shift from winter to spring,
just as it is our collective denial that nudges autumn into winter. In any event, I’m thinking about springs long ago in another part of the
country.
    Spring was a glorious time in the concrete and brick canyons of the housing projects in New York City. Snow gave way to rain and
earthworms were flooding from their earthen homes with KEEP OFF THE GRASS signs towering overhead (if earthworms actually have heads)
onto the concrete paths. Some of us gently picked them up and put them back on the grass. Others took great delight in stomping them.
Spring was the time for pea shooters, water guns, street vendors changing the food in their carts from knishes to penny candy. It was the time
for breaking off pieces of discarded linoleum and sailing them through the air with the silent assumption that they would not strike some
unseen person in the face blocks and blocks away, and the equally silent hope that they would. Spring was the time for hopscotch, stickball,
skellzies, and suicidal feats on monkey bars and swings. Playgrounds were not cushioned with wood shavings or shredded rubber back then.
    The East River that separated Manhattan from Brooklyn didn’t thaw in the spring because it never froze in winter, but the water looked
different in spring. One could actually envision a time when something other than eels lived in the river. But that was way before my time. The
seagulls seemed different in the spring. They squawked more and their shadows were white streaks in the dark waves underneath the
Williamsburg Bridge. There were only three kinds of birds in and around the projects: seagulls in the park along the East River, and brown
sparrows and pigeons that were different shades of gray except for a very rare brown one. Their colors were still white, grey or brown in spring,
but there was a kind of iridescence to their feathers.
    The sky looked different in spring. Clouds seemed freer and less inclined to huddle with other clouds and the rigid blueness that served as
their backdrop gave way to many pastel shades. Mothers were particularly reluctant to acknowledge the arrival of spring. They told us that we
would catch our death of cold if we changed clothes too soon, so many kids ended up wearing thick winter coats almost right up to the time
the public outdoor swimming pool opened. Well, not quite. But it seemed that way. Mothers’ stubborn insistence that we stay bundled up until
it was certain that the cold winds of winter were gone for the season didn’t stop us from trying to sneak past them with no hats and wearing thin
spring jackets. Many of these not-so-secret forays into the ambivalent warmth of early spring were met with words from the mouths of mothers
like, “Boy, where do you think you’re going dressed like that? The beach? I’m not dragging your sorry behind to the emergency room because
you decided to put away your winter coat and stop wearing that perfectly good cap I bought you with the fold-down earflaps.”
    I remember one day in the projects way back in the 1960s. I was looking out my third floor bedroom window at the footbridge that spanned
the East River Drive and its incessant flow of six lanes of traffic –three going downtown towards the Staten Island Ferry and the area that was to
become home to the World Trade Center buildings and three going uptown to Harlem with its vibrancy, beauty, creativity, history and
economic power exemplified by the thick wave of retail establishments on 125th Street owned by people who did not look like the people who
spent their money in those shops. I saw the most miraculous thing. A brightly-colored blue jay was perched on a limb of a tree right outside my
window. I had never seen a bird other than gray pigeons or brown sparrows in the projects before. The multicolored blues of the magnificent
bird were etched in what appeared to be darker shades of blue and black. The colors mimicked the moods of the sky and the symmetrical
splotches of white around its head made me think of clouds.
   It was at that moment I realized what had always and continues to be the case – that Nature is present everywhere, even in the projects.
Sometimes we need to look harder to see it. Sometimes the only way to experience Nature is to not rely exclusively on our eyes or even other
senses that tend to get dulled in concrete environments. There are times when silence is the only place to connect with the passing of
seasons, the rhythm of breathing and gusts of wind that cause leaves to swirl, the softening of dirt to yield worms as the earth orbits closer to the
sun and the wonder of waking every day with the distinct possibility of experiencing a different color right outside our windows. Maybe silence
is our ultimate gift because it is something that we all carry around with us. It resides deep inside the hubbub of the body and whatever
environment we foolishly believe to encapsulate the body. It is the form of wealth that we all have access to. And, no. You can’t eat silence.
Silence will not pay the rent or buy gasoline or a car to put gasoline in. But it is the blackboard, the blank slate upon which all answers are
written. Maybe the biggest obstacle to creating richer possibilities is not asking the right questions.
    Spring is a good time to ask; to step forward into new possibilities and shed the heavy coats of winter. Spring is the time when birds of
different colors dot the landscape to warm our hearts with a blend of songs that all work together. Spring is the time when burrowing animals
stumble about clumsily above ground. It is also the time when wolves forget to disguise themselves as sheep and inadvertently blurt out wolfly
things like Geraldine Ferraro’s comment about how lucky Barack Obama is to be black. Thanks Gerry. Thanks for reminding me that it’s quite
amazing that I am alive at all and even more amazing that I am not in jail or prison. Thanks for reminding me that I am many times more
likely to be negatively affected by diabetes, heart disease and other health maladies. Thanks for reminding me of things I have always known
like the 1968 Kerner Commission pronouncement that this nation is moving towards two societies, one black one white, separate and unequal.
Thanks for emerging from your burrow wearing your true colors of arrogance, presumptuousness and insolence. I will not mistake you for a
sheep and I will certainly not mistake you for an ally. May my rage melt like the winter snow. May your heart warm as the earth circles closer to
the sun. But first you will need to grow a heart. Sorry. I can’t help with that.