april
by ann howell

Spring evokes a myriad of sights and smells most welcome after the harshness of winter, and this has been a harsh winter for our region.

No, it didn’t compare with the final blows dealt by the blizzard of ’93, but cold and precipitation in every form have been consistent. I want to see grape hyacinths budding, daffodils dawning, white crocuses rather than white snowdrifts or icicles clinging to the drooping monkey grass edging my brick walkway. I want my steps to bounce off spongy new grass sprouting from mother earth. I want spring to rip on the scene the way the change is ripping my body. Not in stages, but with great fanfare and resolution. I want raven to fly by with her magical healing energy. I want crow to endow me with her mastery of shape shifting. I want weasels’ ability to change my color with the season, to sport a new coat.

In 1979, I left the winter of my twenty-eighth year behind and pranced into spring with a brand new baby, my first—a boy, now turned a man. I think he protested being forced from the warm womb environment of his conception. The long night of labor became serious business via emergency surgery rather than the joyousness associated with the birth of a child. Not just a Caesarian section, but emergency surgery. Today many c-sections are schedule. The mother-to-be is often prepared for the event. In my day, the Lamaze instructor briefly touched on the subject in obligation to cover all areas of her curriculum. None of us ever anticipated actually having one. So after hours of labor, when it became necessary for me, I was rushed into the dark hole of general surgery, into the bowels of Memorial Mission Hospital, but expected to emerge after being shape-shifted into a new mother. Boy, did I need raven’s healing then, since everyone treated me as if my body had given up the expected child without having undergone major surgery. The happy event had marked a visit deep into the void, surfacing fears never known to me before. For instance, BC (before childbirth) I never knew that I’d be willing to die rather than face the death of my baby. If my baby died, how could I go on? How could I face the sunshine walls of the new nursery? What would I do with the stuffed star that when wound plays “Twinkle, twinkle little star”, or the downy soft blankets and gowns in the drawers? How could I ever gaze upon the family heirloom Cherokee basket bassinet that’d cradled my mother-in-law, husband, and numerous other babies of Haywood County? Being an heirloom, how could I ever get rid of it either? My mind and emotions suffered every imaginable shape shifting, and bent yet again to a darker place when I felt the pressure of the knife and waited. And waited. Where was the cry signaling new life? My mind did a 360 degree virtual tour of the baby’s room at home, again, and the tears had started to fall when I heard the doctor say, “You’ve got a healthy looking boy.” The exclamation point on his statement came in the form of cries. My baby, my son, breathed his first and shouted his presence to all.

Like weasel, I now wore a new coat. The days that followed tested every stitch of that coat and every seam of the new shape. In fact, the birthing seam almost burst, adding insult to injury, but my body, emotions, mind, and spirit survived. Survived the lifting, carrying, diapering, and nursing in spite of the sore incision where it looked like someone had tried to fillet me.

Two Aprils ago I was filleted again for acid reflux problems, but it looked like by someone not sure if they wanted to or not. Praise be for laparoscopic surgery. And again less than a year later when my gallbladder insisted on either killing me with pain or being delivered from my body.

April is back, and I’ve folded over another year. No, I’m not being ripped this April, but have been. This April I’ll be finishing up my recovery following yet another surgery, this time in late February. I’ve risen from the void, shape shifted yet again, and am wearing a new spring coat.

The price? A few missing body parts. The hysterectomy is over, and new life has begun; all is not sterile. New life regenerates over and over, in whatever form, if we’re only willing. Whether it’s the miraculous birth of a child or the passing of a season, it’s important to be ready for the evolution and expanding into what’s next, to flow through the experience, to grow and move forward. I’ll always be a mother, but my childbearing years are over. I look forward to continually seeking the feminine face of God and growing into the next phase, over and over again. I will always seek the hyacinths, daffodils, and crocuses of spring and the time of reawakening, and I will always look to the acolytes of raven, crow, and weasel to usher me along the path.

Ann Howell is a native Western North Carolinian, married, mother of two grown sons, part-time administrative assistant for a local philanthropist, and involved with a writing group where she is attempting to write a novel. She has had a short story published on a website and three that accompanied recipes in the cookbook Hungry for Home, published last fall by Novella Press in Charlotte.