Mom in My Colors, by Xin Li

"You have to remember the Chinese name for forsythia." I told my son, "It is the brightest yellow, the very first you see every spring."

It was this yellow that started an especially tender season in my childhood: My mom was happier; she took walks instead of being busy at home; she taught me other trees and bushes.

Later, I understood that her happiness did not just come from loving spring, but also from the fact that spring was edible.

In the winter before the colors arrived, we ate frozen cabbages, frozen daikons, and potatoes. We had a monthly ration of one pound of meat per family — 0.13 ounces per person per day. 

Therefore, it was a permanent part of my childhood spring that my handkerchief had blotches of purple, green, brown, and my nails had the color of what was on the dinner table.

The best time to pick clovers was when the pink petals of wild plum began to cover the grass, when the forsythia had more green than yellow. Eyes on the ground, we searched for clovers with folded leaves. They were just coming through, their stems were white with a slight hint of green. They had tiny baby hair almost invisible to naked eye.

The goji sprouts came later. We left them to grow to the length of my fingers to produce a satisfactory bite. Their leaves were glossy; their stems had a hue of light purple. By the time they turned really purple, they were too bitter to eat.

There was this weed we called Gray, because the back of its leaves were covered with a layer of powdery gray. It grew in abundance along the roadside, under trees and bushes. We only picked it when clovers were gone and goji were too wooden to pinch.

Wild plums were green, because none ripened on its branch. By the time they reached the size of a green pea, we already circled the trees more often to patrol the territory we claimed in our own minds. We picked them when the danger to lose them to other kids became too great.

Every kid in my neighborhood mastered the art for splitting a plum into two halves without bruising its tender green body. We knew how to pick out the pure white ball in the center that never had a chance to grow into a mature stone. We popped the fruit into our mouths, one half at a time, sucked, held, rolled it from side to side, and chewed so reluctantly only when the temptation defeated our willpower.

The sour taste of a baby green plum was impossible, but most heavenly for us during those years, when everything edible was delicious.

"But why do I have to remember in particular the forsythia, Mama?"

"Because it is the first flower Abu taught me."

Abu is my mother.

Three Color Pieces, by Sara Robbins

Blue Eyes

My father visited me in a dream recently. It was the first time since he died, almost 40 years ago. I've seen my mother (who's been gone 30 years) a few times in dreams. The last time I hugged her and asked "Mommy, what's it like to be dead?" and she said "It's wonderful" and I woke up crying, my face covered with tears. This time my father sat in front of me — we held hands and I looked into his eyes — the bluest blue eyes I've ever seen — Paul Newman blue. His hands were cold and we both knew he was dead. I asked "Daddy, are you lonely?" and he smiled and said "But I'm not alone." Again I awoke crying, tears running down my face. I believe them both.

Baby Green

Green is what I see now. I've waited and here it is. Baby green, tender and sweet, and it's all for me. I need to paint a picture. The trees across the pond, black branches, green dots everywhere. Every spring I vow I will capture this image and every year the green deepens and darkens, the trees fill out, and I sigh. It happens too fast to catch on paper. Green.

Hot Pink 

Every year I plant hot pink geraniums next to indigo blue lobelia and white impatiens. I am loyal to the colors. I also plant lots of yellow, orange and red marigolds. These are happy colors and I believe marigolds keep bugs away and protect vegetables in the garden. I joke that I garden like a Polish grandmother (I am neither). Loud colors and lots of whirlygigs and windmills in bright colors. It's all very childlike and lighthearted and so temporary, so I savor.

Haiku: Heart of Winter to Heart of Spring, by Tina Wright

the roar of hard coal

pouring down a metal chute

the silence after

winter, my wife and 

mother dead yet the crazy 

leaning barn still stands

pips to their gladys,

sundogs simmer late afternoon

both sides    cold sun

alarm clock ringing!

daylight savings time begins

cursing in the dark

the great blue heron

sails over my niece's house

close as a prayer

the cat plays with her

feather then leaves. a breeze flips

the feather on its side

how lonely it is

sudden yellow of forsythia

on her birthday

april morning quite

muggy people wearing coats

wishing they were not

tails up jumping

for joy heifers out on

new spring grass

dreading summer heat

hot may day, sharp shadow of

trailer on my lawn

dew lights new maple

leafs, dogwood blossoms.

crossing guard near school yawning

Anticipating Spring, by Susan Lesser

The zipper on the short flame-colored jacket I bought in Kilkenny has broken. I hope it can be repaired, but, in truth, I am delighted to find both zipping rows gnashing their teeth at each other and refusing to mesh. It is a sign of spring.

Have you noticed? As much as the trumpeting daffodils and the exuberant crabapple blossoms, a winter wardrobe will announce the arrival of sun-warmed days and greening trees. I do not lament the missing glove, nor the boots that have lost their waterproofing. Buttons have gone missing from two sweaters, but, no matter, I will not need to fasten them now. Who knows where I abandoned the blue fleece hat with cosy earflaps. In any case it is gone and for a while I will need to pull my scarf up around my ears, but not for long. The twee of the red-winged blackbird, as he shrills from the larch, is much sharper now that my ears are uncovered.

Eventually, I will take my little Irish jacket to the tailor and have a new zipper installed, but I doubt I will think of it again until next fall. Then, as the leaves begin to launch themselves from the treetops, and the fields along Route 96 fill with gaudy pumpkins, ready for autumn holidays, I will remember my jacket and my long-lost glove. But not now! Right now, I am relishing the newborn springtime, happy my wardrobe can serve as a worthy harbinger of the season as surely as the spring peepers exclaiming their delight for all to hear.

Matriarchs, Aunts, and Strong Women From Long Ago, And Not So Long Ago, by VJ Armstrong

The following are the first two entries in a series that the author intends to expand to a dozen or so pieces under this title.

Even at Nineteen (Aunt Elsie)

Even at nineteen, she felt daring enough to travel a thousand miles north and take on a room full of strange children, children confined by the tough scrubby woods of North Ontario to lives of hardship and isolation and wonder. These children knew how to chop and stack wood by seven years old, they knew to avoid the sides of the trails where muskeg could suck you down, and they knew how to bask their bodies in woodsmoke to ward off the interminable black flies. These children had never seen fertile lands like where Elsie had grown up, had never seen wheat or potatoes or apples grow. 

Elsie was as strange to them as they to her, and Elsie had never been so very far away from all that she had known. Daring was not enough. Elsie returned the following year to a job closer to home, having done what she could to teach reading and writing in a northern world too remote for even her Strathdee hardiness to handle.

The Peony in Her Hair

My mother grew peonies in her garden, big fat round blossoms filled with delicate layers of tissue-like petals and dripping with sweet syrupy scents. She had bushes of pink ones, and white ones, and once, a small bush of cranberry red ones too. 

Before the peonies blossomed, they were little tight-fisted balls of green. Slowly the fist grew bigger and began to show the color of the blossom underneath, as the tight green skin cracked and spread a little wider every day. Even when the color of the blossom began to show, it stayed tight and waxy and stuck in a ball. That's when the ants came. A few ants, and then a few more, and then dozens of ants crawled all over the flower balls, eating up, as my mother explained, the sweet waxy layer so that the blossom could open. 

I do not know what possessed me to cut one of these flower balls and put it by my sister's head when she was sleeping. But I do know that I did not do that again. Ever.

Raindrop Drum, by Vita

Raindrops continue

tapping on the sunlight glass

Why do they call it a sunlight?

It is the sound of the raindrops

that brings calm

and peace

to my little writing room

my little

hardwon

Room of One's Own.

I think from now on

I will call that thing

formerly known as a sunlight

my little

rooftop

raindrop

drum.

This Winter, Sylvia Bailey

This winter was perfect; so long, so dark, so cold. And there was so little I had to do — get groceries, make some big pots of something.

I went to bed when I wanted. The same with getting up. "No where to go, nothing to do" was my life this past winter. I could start a fire and I did, most days. I dreamt, I read, I meditated, I drew, I slept some more. Many days I didn't leave the house. I watched entire series of some TV shows. Here in America where doing is king, I was the Queen of Being.  

One friend, on Sabbatical, is working on writing three books — serious, academic books — while raising two teenaged granddaughters, and running a program at a major university. Always running, always behind. Doing good works, faithfully attending church, driving the granddaughters to piano lessons, violin lessons, gymnastics, and basketball. Doing myriad serious and righteous things in the world.

"And what are you doing this afternoon?" she asked over the phone. I answered, from my recliner, from my still-pajamaed body, "I'm going to a yoga class and later I may spend time with Carl Jung's Red Book."

Carl would have understood. This was more than enough for one afternoon.