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Prancing down a primrose path
(by Jennifer Botkin Phillips - April 23, 2008)
At first, I thought my unreserved mirthfulness was just from the release of being wrapped up, cooped up, covered up and sometimes even laid up over the winter months. Then, I realized, these feelings of frivolity are also due to the vivid colors dotting our landscapes. With spring popping out all around us it all makes me want to play hooky or at least go prancing down a primrose path.
It seems we watch and watch for signs of spring and nothing happens, and then we miss a day or two and when we again look, suddenly there before our eyes, the trees are dripping with blooms and daffodils are shooting up all around with their yellow “faces” signaling renewal.
Just today, while tooling down the street I sensed a bubbling up in my spirit that wasn’t to be quelled. Perhaps it was due to our recent abundance of bright sun and mild temperatures that I found intoxicating. The gentle breeze in the air, the forsythia and tulips I passed, and the assemblage of robins flitting across greening lawns all worked together to cinch my gaiety. I began putting down the windows of my Jeep and inhaling the fresh air that now meant that my hair was blowing every which way. Strands were falling across my forehead and sections were whipping about my face… and I didn’t care a whit!
It’s not the first time I’ve exercised the “free spirit” that resides inside, but sometimes is buried deep. For the better part of my life my usual comment to the driver when riding in a car was, “Would you mind putting the window up? I don’t want my hair to get mussed.”
Totally silly, I know. But, back in the day when I was more self-conscious and insecure, I would have been mortified to be seen with mussed hair. Or, wet hair either, for that matter.
Like in 1986, when on a writers’ cruise that took us to the
Caribbean . Here we were stopped in the world famous
port of
St. Thomas with pristine beaches of white sand and crystal clear azure blue waters, and I was too inhibited to immerse myself. While on our beach excursion I did go into the water but only ankle deep.
Later, when I shared with my mom about the trip she’d asked if I’d gone swimming?
“Oh, no. I didn’t want to get my hair wet”, I exclaimed.
Needless to say, my mother was aghast. She wouldn’t have missed the opportunity to experience swimming in the swirling waters of the
Caribbean for anything.
Today, after nearly two decades of Life 101, I now even talk to strangers!
A few weeks ago I was with a group of friends at Matthew’s Colonial Diner, in Waldwick. I’d excused myself to visit the lady’s room and ended up engaged in an interesting conversation with another patron from the diner.
My new acquaintance, “Doris”, a petite 4’9” senior dynamo, led me to her table to meet her husband, Bill, a kind faced man, and another friend, Susan, from River Vale, with her mother, Edna. Edna, a stunning and very alert lady, was turning 100 years old the very next day!
I’d never seen any of these people before and likely will never run into them again, but in those five or 10 minutes that we chatted and laughed, we connected.
Doris exuded a contagious zest for life that spoke to me and Edna, going strong at 99, was an inspiration.
Helen Keller writes in her poem, “Resolve to Keep Happy”, … “Join the great company of those who make the barren places of life fruitful with kindness… External conditions are the accidents of life, its outer trappings. The great, enduring realities are love, and service. Resolve to keep happy, and your joy and you shall form an invincible host against difficulties.”
Maybe unreserved mirthfulness isn’t as frivolous as it sounds after all?
Until next time… Top Blonde… on the run.
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