Spring Dreams

I am so very, very ready for spring.

Generally I’m fine with winter. Ten years in Minnesota has inured me to it–that spring could arrive in February is so laughably soon that it usually surprises me.

This year, however, I am feeling a serious jones for spring. There’s a whole flock of chipping sparrows on the feeder, but…I want plants. I actually had a DREAM last night about wanting plants–I was horribly depressed and my ex-husband had hit upon a plan to make money by storing people in vegetative states in the apartment, and I was wandering around the neighborhood thinking "I need to get away, I need to leave, why am I here…" and this woman started telling me about her flowers. She had Virginia creeper, already turning red (my brain has little sense of seasons…) and lavender and liatris and a rhodedendron that was white with yellow centers.

I wandered back to the apartment, thinking "I need plants, I am never entirely happy without plants," and discovered that the Grandfather of Rabbits was sitting outside the back door. (A female relative of mine was cooking for him, and I do not know now who it was, although I knew her very well in my dream.) The Grandfather of Rabbits was an elderly Hispanic man, and his various sons and grandsons were wandering around the backyard, generally being very attractive young dark-skinned men, although it wasn’t particularly a temptation, since even I know better than to get involved with a rabbit.

I said as much to the Grandfather of Rabbits, who told me that if he was fifty years younger… Then he took my hand and stared into the palm. "You need to be somewhere with grass and sky and stone," he said. Then "Ha! Listen to me, I sound like Hugin."

Hugin being one of Odin’s ravens, I said, rather tentatively, "You mean…someplace Norse?"

"Sure, what do I know?"

Then it started to rain, and I woke up.

My buddy Otter told me that it sounded like I was being given a mythic quest, but rabbits are just too ADHD to make good quest-givers. Which is just as well, since I’m probably too ADHD to pull off a mythic quest anyway…

But damn, I’m ready for spring.

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