JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Yesterday, we were talking about the mundane, yearly rituals of spring, a season that, more than any other, calls to mind ritual. At least, it does here in New England, where we watch for the extra five minutes of sun, the forsythia, the first daffodils, and then the lilacs. We wait for the largest mound of snow in the shadiest part of the property to vanish, despite the fact that snow transmutes, not into gold, but mud.
Nobody captures New England's seasons and small-town rituals like Paula Munier, whose Mercy Carr series made a big splash with its debut, A BORROWING OF BONES, and continued with BLIND SEARCH. The third book, THE HIDING PLACE, will be out a week from today on March 30th, so you have time to preorder it from your local bookseller. If you haven't read Paula before, her post today, on the joys and sorrows of March, will give you a taste of her gorgeous prose.
“In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.”
--Mark Twain
When I moved to New England more than twenty years ago, I quickly realized that there were three things you could talk to even the most laconic Yankee about: 1) Sports (meaning the Red Sox, the Patriots, the Celtics, or the Bruins); 2) driving directions (meaning which convoluted way you came to get wherever you are); and 3) the weather (meaning it’s likely to change as you speak).
In the land of unpredictable weather, the climate is never more capricious than it is in Spring. Well, we may call it Spring, but it’s really a calamitous clash of three major seasons: Winter, Spring, and Mud. With the Ides of March come the most treacherous stage of this transition, when slush may seep into your foundation and mire may strand your four-wheel drive vehicle and ice may break under your feet. All this while snowdrops peep out of the snow and sap flows in the maples and chorus frogs croak away.
I set the third book in my Mercy Carr series, THE HIDING PLACE, in March because it’s a story about the transitions that mark our lives, for better or worse: season to season, place to place, relationship to relationship, childhood to adolescence to adulthood and beyond. There is promise and peril in these transitions—and even when we survive and thrive as a result, we are not the same. We are forever changed. If we’re lucky, we are reborn.
March is the time where winter and spring stand side by side. In New England this annual rebirth is inescapable, as the icy-white landscape melts into the rainbow colors of printemps: the pale, perfect shade of green leafing buds, the cheerful yellow of forsythia, the royal purple of crocus, the bright azure of bluebells. But even those of us living in tropical places where the seasons are less distinct have suffered through the desolate winter of this pandemic. As we sign up for vaccines and set the clocks forward and order seeds for our summer gardens, we must still wear masks and shelter in place and send virtual hugs to our grandchildren on Zoom.
And we must still bury our dead. My 87-year-old father died earlier this month. (Not two weeks after he received his first vaccine. Sigh….) It was sudden and not sudden, unexpected and expected, a bitter farewell and a sweet blessing, all at once. We buried the Colonel’s ashes at a lovely military cemetery at the edge of a woods, to the sound of birdsong and the bugler’s Taps. It was one of those beautiful warm and sunny days that Spring sends early in the season as a sacred promise. We couldn’t help but believe that Dad was in a better place.
A week later it’s 9 degrees outside. Cold and grey, befitting our grief. But signs of Spring are everywhere. My heirloom vegetable, herb, and flower seed packets arrive from Artistic Gardens in Vermont. The daylight lingers a little longer every day. Eastern phoebes and pine warblers and white-winged crossbills return.
The owls are hooting and the woodpeckers are pecking and the red-winged blackbirds are conk-la-ree-ing. The dogs are discovering their lost bones and the cat is venturing out on snow-free ground and I am cleaning closets and choosing wallpaper and setting my seedlings in south-facing windows to soak up the sun.
After the graveside service for my father was over, the cemetery manager—a tall, kind man named Patrick—said this to us. “People are always looking down here. Down at the earth. Down at the stones. Down at the epitaphs.”
We looked at him. Baffled.
“Yesterday a bald eagle flew over during a service,” said Patrick. “Remember to look up.”
We all looked up. The sky was blue and empty and the sun shone brightly. There was no bald eagle. No sign from my father.
But it’s early days yet. Spring is not here in full flower. As we emerge from this long winter, let’s keep to our rituals. Let’s keep an eye out for signs. And let’s remember to look up.
You can find out more about Paula Munier and the Mercy Carr series at her website. You can friend Paula on Facebook, follow her on Twitter as @PaulaSMunier and enjoy great posts about books and dogs on her Instagram, @PaulaSMunier.
Don't forget to make your reservation to see Paula and Hank in conversation on Tuesday, March 30 at 7pm EST!
