Spring Archives - Martin van Creveld

A lawn full of colorful crocus in Copenhagen, Denmark. Similar:

Like everyone else, I am looking for some good news in a world seemingly gone mad. Alas, I am no poet. Or else I would have used my own words to celebrate the coming of spring. Before I serve you another person’s flowers, though, I want to tell you of something I used to do many years ago. You think it is funny, you think it is weird? Honi soit qi mal y pense.

Along with my young family, I spent the years 1969-71 and 1975-76 in London. First, working on my dissertation (Hitler’s Strategy, 1940-1941: The Balkan Clue). Later, on sabbatical writing Supplying War. Though the landlords were kind—I have nothing but good memories of them—the lodgings were, by today’s standards, quite miserable. We did not even have a toilet to call our own, sharing the one we used with another couple instead. Rent being cheap, though, we were able to afford a little Hillman Imp. Second hand, of course, white, with a red stripe along the side. It had two doors and an opening rear window. I still remember the registration number—DKM-789-C. During the eighteen months or so we had it it broke down many times. Nevertheless, never did I enjoy a car more. Probably not a country house within a hundred miles of London we did not visit!

However, its most important use was to take me a couple of miles northeast from Kilburn to Hampstead Heath where I used to go running two or three times a week. Each year, come late February/early March the crocuses, yellow, blue and white would show themselves. Just as in the pic. And you know what? Coming back from my run, I used to lie down on the ground and kiss them. Yes. Kiss them.

With that off my chest, here is my favorite description of spring (by a lady, unknown to me, who identifies herself as Lhtheaker):

The grass is green across the hill,
But yellow blooms the daffodil.
It’s sunshine on a little stalk,
A friendly flower, I bet they talk…

Of little kids, too long inside
They burst outdoors to play and hide.
Tracking mud and bringing bugs.
Look, there’s footprints on the rug!

Tiny whirlwinds, these little tykes,
They skin their knees while riding bikes.
They rip and roar, they’re running wild!
What fun it is to be a child.

It grows warmer every day.
Shoo the children out to play!
Pick the flowers, play in mud.
Too much rain, here comes a flood!

My snowy, winter days are gone.
I mourn them, but I hear a song
Of birds in trees; wind chimes ring.
I guess it might as well be spring!

Alas, I am no poet. Or else I would have used my own words to celebrate the coming of spring. Before I serve you another person’s flowers, though, I want to tell you of something I used to do many years ago. You think it is funny, you think it is weird? Be my guest.

Along with my young family, I spent the years 1969-71 and 1975-76 in London. First, working on my dissertation (Hitler’s Strategy, 1940-1941: The Balkan Clue). Later, on sabbatical writing Supplying War. Though the landlords were kind—I have nothing but good memories of them—the lodgings were, by today’s standards, quite miserable. We did not even have a toilet to call our own, sharing the one we used with another couple instead. Rent being cheap, though, we were able to afford a little Hillman Imp. Second hand, of course, white, with a red stripe along the side. It had two doors and an opening rear window. Numerous breakdowns notwithstanding, never did I enjoy a car more. Probably not a country house within a hundred miles of London we did not visit!

With that off my chest, here is my favorite description of spring (by Ada Limon):

More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
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that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.

By the way, my second wife and I do have fuchsias in our tiny front-door garden.