Jean Naggar

Spring is hiding, but I am in no mood for a game of hide-and-seek. I need the real thing after the winter we have had this year. I am rigorously proceeding with all the spring requirements: spring cleaning, sorting and tidying, Passover etc., but the touch of spring sunshine on my face is missing. I dare not put my plants out on our small terrace, although they suddenly feel claustrophobic in the living room. The inhospitable cold wind still breathes an ominous chill into every day. The sight of buds bursting into bloom and trees leafing into delicate spring exuberance is yet to come. Winter is refusing to let go, hanging on with a relentless grip, and it seems that spring is not powerful enough to insist that it's time is now.
Nonetheless, life moves on. I wrestle my way forward into my novel and find that new directions emerge and new connections are made between characters in a larger more metaphoric sense. It is such hard work to move with the characters as they swerve from the path I planned for them and create enticing new opportunities. Letting go of a lovingly crafted episode that no longer advances the direction the story is taking is truly painful, but I will wait until I have completed a full draft and have had some "beta" readers react to it, before making the decision, even though I sort of know now that the painful excision will have to be made.
I am having so much fun with the process and the fulfillment of my life's dream to write a novel. Who knows if it will ever see the light of day, but meanwhile, I forge ahead, loving the work, loving the opportunity to try

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I have never looked forward to March as fervently as I do this year. We have family birthdays cropping up early in the month. My mother's birthday was on March 13th. She would have been 101. In celebration of her life and in thanks for the life she gave me, I have posted another of her paintings on this month's blog. A wide variety of her paintings can be found on this website,

http://grannyart.free.fr/grannyart/

April will bring two BatMitzvahs of close family, as well as the yearly ordeal that is Passover. Surely by then, we will have segued into warmer weather and the use of our terrace once again? I think often of Stony Creek House, its sturdy stone walls warding off the cold, the roof sagging under snowfalls and ice, the view drere and somber as the house freezes in solitude and we pray that no pipes burst and no trees fall victim to the ice and the cold.
I am so tired of snow and ice, white and grey, multiple layers of clothing, and hefty boots to dare even a few steps outside. The one Manhattan blessing is the way the skies are often blue even when the thermometer plunges to Arctic depths.
Still, the gentle warmth of spring sunlight and the slow wash of color as flowers and leaves break into bud and bloom, the first happy trills of courting birds, these are the moments my heart desires. Enough of winter hibernation for this year! We need spring!
I am getting used to living in two universes, the one we all live in, and the one in my head that clicks into place more and more as my novel grows. Every small detail that parallels my story or my characters leaps out at me when people are conversing, or when I read the paper or listen to the news. I am living there as much as living here, and sometimes it is hard to make the bridge from one to the other. This is a new and absorbing experience. I am grateful for the opportunity to savor it to the full.

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On my wall is a painting,
Patricia's painting.
She is gone, but on my wall
Is with me still
And we are young
And spilling laughter
Floating like blossom in the breeze
Of Hyde Park in spring.
A path unfolds its way,
Destination unknown.
Figures faint and indistinct
Perambulate the gravel,
And my spirit, caught by the painting
On my wall
Leaps to the past,
A bird soaring from a cage,
Feeling the breeze
Lifting my hair
Dancing through trees
Heavy with leaves and history,
Fluttering a heart
Tricked by the weight of years
Into old age.

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