April at last! I kiss the ground, greeting our fourth month with enthusiasm reserved for reunions with a spouse or a long-lost friend. April is that “long-lost friend” we’ve not seen in far too long. Has it been merely 12 months since we’ve turned the calendar to this bright page? Whew, we cry: winter is over—April has arrived!

Never mind the doomsayers who bemoan April’s fickle ways. Well I know that bitter winds may yet blow, torrential downpours might extinguish new greenery and errant frosts might visit on occasional evenings. But these are short-lived trials that hardly merit the chant of “Aprile is the cruelest month.”

The too-too cruel fact about April is Tax Time, smack in the middle of our pleasure. Weather or weather-related facts can do nothing to change that. But to balance the inevitability of April 15 comes Easter, that glorious season of joyful rebirth. I am ready to forgive and forget blustery, never-ending March as blithe April slips through the seasonal doors.

Is there anyone who does not greet April with this same affection? Surely I am not the lone sentimental April fool who looks at the month and envisions soft, warm breezes with longer hours of daylight, aided and abetted by the reintroduction of Daylight Saving Time. Not to mention frost-free nights, shucking of wearisome outer garments and prospects of retrieving sleek trout from rushing fresh-water streams.

But for more than the obvious reasons April has a permanent hold on my heart and memories. Robert Browning had it right: “Oh, to be in England now that April’s there...” Decades ago I sailed for England on the fifth of April. My ticket was for one-way only, and I toted a minimum of luggage, sneakers, sketch pad and paints. (The book I envisioned writing, “Europe in Sneakers on $5 a Day” never materialized but dozens of paintings did.) It was a trip that did not disappoint.

Some years after my Big Trip I was married in a historic church on a sunny afternoon in April. And a few years after that my second son arrived on a brilliant Easter morning that I shall never forget.

More recently, I traveled to Boston to watch a daughter run in the grueling Boston Marathon, always held on Patriot’s Day, April 19th, in the Bay State. The warm winds of spring were nonexistent as temperatures hovered in the low 40’s. The Boston pavements were cold and wet and snowflakes whirled above the crowds. But hey, this was the North: it was supposed to be cold.

Even these vivid memories blur as I watch daily changes in our back yard as it wakes up. It’s almost as if the fearsome Garden God of Winter has decided to finally lift his hand and wave a gracious benediction to the kingdom, granting permission to seedlings, bulbs and sprouts to push through the soil and greet the world.

Just look: a clutch of saffron daffodils, four regal Emperor tulips, fragile white snow drops under the tree peonies. And did they survive, the three bushes that yield the rare rose-like blossoms in late April? Ah, I spot a green node on each of the ancient bushes. Even the scraggly azaleas seem to be
struggling into spring outfits of glossy green. Ditto the dogwood trees that frame the garden gate. And of course here comes forsythia the faithful, always gallant and eager to be the first to show off its yellow blooms.

Yes, April has danced in and accompanied Mother Nature to our gardens and our lives. My memories of Aprils past lie dormant, but this is now and present April beckons with a smile.

Barbara M. Dickinson is a Roanoke novelist and sometimes painter.

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