"Whenever Spring Comes Through Again"

This is a homework story written for Burt Prelutsky's writing class circa 1973. My pen name at that time was Zeppha Wilder Neuf. An update: I didn't get to Zurich and my mother never saw Ireland again.

WHENEVER SPRING COMES THROUGH AGAIN"

It was beginning to be impossible.

It was just that practice didn't make it any easier and the practice also did not turn it into dreary routine. Each time it was equally hard, equally new and all my avoiding of it didn't ever disguise the fact that once again, it was time to say goodbye.

My mother used to call New York her home. She never lived there but she said that claiming New York City made it seem as though someone for certain would turn up; she didn't believe in saying goodbye. Even a funeral did not depress her. "Who knows," she'd say cheerily, "We'll probably meet that old goat sometime in you know where."

Life for my mother is an adventure, an opening night. If she has any regrets, she passes them off with an, "Oh, well--all shows close." She also has the advantage of a turn of mind that assures her everybody comes to a bad end, so there is no point in keeping posted. When I have grieved the loss of contact with an old friend and wondered aloud what happened, her sympathetic answer is always a shrug. And then she gives her own version of what most likely happened to bring on this exit. She does not lack for gory detail. It has been amusing in my brother's case to hear her vivid closing notices and then to receive a letter from my brother somewhere deep in Spain. "Ah," she counters, "Another opening of another show," revising the former Feast of the Blessed Good Riddance.

Last Wednesday, she and I were sitting in the back yard. "What happened to your garden?" she asked. "I think it's Old Man Briar," I replied. When he moved he took his music with him and it was as though he took my garden, too."

"The pear is looking better, though. Didn't the pear like opera?" "I've been singing a little to the pear because it nearly died when he left . 'Time has been blessing me and patience saved the best for me; I walked all alone in the garden till I found a rose.' Only I changed it to pear. "

We talked a little about Old Man Briar and the new neighbors and I asked her how she ever stood the nomadic life we had led; how did she come to terms with leaving her friends.

"Oh, the good ones pop up again. Clifford and Berg came to see us in Tauxemont. We stopped over in Cincinnati and found Gibson. It's a small world. Dale's coming to see you, isn't he? I wouldn't be surprised if John came with him. After four years, you're still upset that you won't ever see Gabrielle; it's possible. But then again, who can say? You'll be going on a summer jaunt with Jenny some time and there you will be sitting in the middle of Zurich, arguing away with Gagrielle over coffee."

I thought of the first time I went to Gabrielle's house. She made a pot of coffee and whipped up the cream even though she hadn't asked if I used cream. She served the coffee in fragile cups with handles that curled like the tips of the cream. She had a precise and gently devotional way of setting the places. Later I found that kindness was a quiet habit that she wore with unobtrusive regularity.

I felt a little comforted thinking of the adventure in Zurich waiting for me and asked my mom if she'd like a little weak coffee. I'd whip up some cream for myself. She didn't answer for a moment. Then she said, with a seriousness I had never seen in her that she had some advice for me. No proverbs, no one-liners. I wondered what it was going to be about.

"Don't be thinking," she said, "that this is chronic with lifelong sadness, that you're a wallower. I know what's going on in your head and let me tell you, some things do matter. When I left Ireland, we had lived there six years. Every day I had walked with Cassie Main to Cleary Park. On rainy days, we put umbrellas over the prams and sat shivering but enjoying ourselves till teatime. Sometimes teas was at her house with Matt coming home early. Sometimes it was at my flat. I liked going over to her place better. I loved Cassie and Matt. I really loved them. When I had to go to Brazil, I thought I wasn't going to be able to endure the leaving. The year you were born, I stayed all that year in bed moaning and wasting away. They said it was childbed fever. It wasn't. It was the awful letting go of the forty pounds and dreams I had gained at Cassie's teatable. The war slapped me in the face. There were so many duties. Slowly I began to take an interest in the people around me. I thought of my mother hating the farm all those years and decided that she should have tried. She could have had a good time if she hadn't fought. I have had a wonderful life. I took my due as it came. But I will tell you now that all your remedies aren't going to work if you're looking for a cure. I never got over leaving Ireland. Never. It was never the same. Some things do matter. Some things don't change."

Then her tone brightened and she looked her old self. "There's one way to manage--make believe. The show goes on. How many times have you heard me say, 'Next year we are going on our Tour.'"

It's true. I've been meaning to take my mother for 19 years. In my senior year in high school, she and I decided we were going to make a big trip as we had always had such fun on our little excursions. We didn't get around to it. Lately, it's been that Jenny and she and I are going, leaving the boys to fend for a month themselves while we're off to the Lake Country. I've wanted to go for the sightseeing and the company but I never realized that for my mother it was not wanting to go. It was an inevitability, a having to.

Which brings me to my friends today. This class has meant a great deal to me. Someday, it will be a story with all the sounds of the seawall, the colors in the windowboxes, and the good talk of meeting minds. It will have the pleasantries of Brunswick getting dressed to answer the phone, the worrying over Julia. It will have the relief that one of the drop-outs was Knickerbocker and it will tell of my spilling-over, unabashed admiration for the only real writer in the bunch. It will end on a note of hopeful anticipation.

I can't come back; the class is done but do I have to know that? Please. Let some of my deceitful ways rub off on you. As you file out onto the drive, don't linger. Go on about your business. Don't stop to say, "Well, this is it. Goodbye Zeppha." Say instead, "See you next Tuesday! See you in Ireland!"