By PAT WICK

© Another Day in the Country

The other day, I heard this wonderful definition of spring. You know me, I was rustling around trying to find a pencil and paper to write the exact words down and couldn’t find either. I believe, however, that I remember them … almost: Spring is nature’s most abundant forgiveness!

Think about it! In the spring, all the excess of summer, the forgetfulness of fall, the weary winter is all forgotten and forgiven and new life, new possibilities, beginnings, spring forth.

I love celebrating new beginnings. In fact, I just love celebrating. Life itself is enough reason to celebrate, but on these special occasions, we underline the text.

On Easter Sunday, we went with friends to a new kind of Messiah celebration in Lindsborg. It was a program of spirituals sung in a sequence to tell the Easter story and it was wonderful. That was a performance deserving a repeat!

To mark the occasion of getting dressed up for an event, I dove into my closet to find something to wear. You know, I find that I don’t have as many occasions to do what I call “dressing up” since I’ve moved to the country. So in the spirit of doing something different, and making the day special, I began the Easter hunt.

In times past, I’d go looking for a hat to wear with the spring dress on Easter Sunday, wherever we were going — usually to a restaurant, when we were in California. But windy spring days have tamed my enthusiasm for hats in Kansas. I just went into the closet in search of a simple spring dress.

The first dress I picked up was one I last wore seven or eight (or more) years ago when I needed a church dress for an excursion with Mom. I could hardly get that dress over my head let alone my hips. It’s one of those fine dresses with a complete lining and both the interior and exterior were straining when I got it zipped, in spite of my exercise program. We were headed to have Easter dinner with a friend and such a tight dress would never do — I might pop like a cooked sausage casing when I sat down to the table.

The next dress was too breezy, my legs would be cold, the third try was disgusting so I settled for my winter blacks — slacks. By the time my sister picked me up, late, I discovered she’d been going through the same spring growing pains.

The first dress wouldn’t zip past the bust line. The second dress required nylons. When she got the nylons tugged into place she wheeled in front of the mirror and saw a huge splotch on them from ankle to calf. “What was that?” only to discover it was not on the socks but paint on the back of her leg (where she couldn’t see) from a recent sprucing up she’d been doing on the woodwork at Jake’s Place. The nylons required heels, she thought, and one trip across the floor nixed those shoes.

“I’ve been wearing Birkenstocks too long,” she reported. So much for country living. It has changed our lifestyle! She was back to flats.

And so we gave ourselves the ultimate in forgiveness, permission on another lovely spring day in the country, to not dress up in anything uncomfortable or confining.