An Especially Poignant Spring

Spring arrives at our half hill in a rush. One day everything seems bare, even dead. The next buds are swelling into blooms, leaves emerge, and the whole picture changes. The wild azaleas put on their brief show of delicate beauty (meanwhile, the cultivated but neglected domesticated azalea in the back flower bed outdoes itself with blossoms. The native hydrangeas, which all winter look like a collection of dead sticks, put out the most tender green leaves, luminous when backlighted. Soon they will take on their familiar oak leaf shape. The dogwoods are especially showy this year. Old Susanna Road leading out from town and Quail Hollow Drive, our street, have become an avenue of white. Even our cautious white oak trees are joining in the proclamation of spring.

And the other day, sitting on our front deck, we heard -- heard, not saw -- our favorite proclamation of the season: the laughter of children floating across the slough. It has been spring break time for the schools, and even though it was March, the water was high enough, and warm enough, for the children to make the most of it.

The water at the end of our dock is high enough that friends had no trouble picking us up one evening for a picnic on one of the islands.

Spring does bring pollen and catkins, too, but that's a small price for having trees.

This is an especially poignant spring, because it probably will be our last on this blessed spot.

We have lived in this house, first as weekenders and then as full-timers, longer than we have lived in any house. We wanted a place where our children and their children could come and bring their friends, a place with plenty of room for them and yet private space for us. We wanted the house to fit onto our half hill, among the trees, and to look as if belonged there. We got all of that and more.

But times and people change. The children cannot come as often as they once did, and the grandchildren are at the age when they need calendars to keep up with all of their activities. It is wonderful when they can come, but for most of the year we have way too much space to heat and cool and clean, and we have figured out that if the kids get an opportunity to come for a week or two, it would be more economical to put them up in a condo.

Still, it is not only the trees that have put down roots here. We bought and built because of the water, but we have found in Dadeville a sense of community that makes us look forward to coming home when we are away. Nor could we ask for better neighbors. We would love to find a way to live within a stone's throw of where we are now; certainly we don't want to move more than a mile or too.

It was late in the summer when we made the decision to put the house on the market, knowing that it was unlikely to sell during the winter. We went through the ritual of thinning out and throwing away, but only in a desultory fashion. With a new season bursting upon us, the task of deciding what to keep and what to sell, give or throw away takes on a new urgency. Still, until the clock is ticking I will delay making decisions on some possessions. Our real estate agent, Linda Shaffer, has posted lots of photos on her web site (http://www.flexmls.com/share/1iZp/377-Quail-Hollow-Dadeville-AL-36853). If you know someone who is looking to live in paradise, you might tell them about it.

When we first began coming to this house, we arrived eagerly on Friday nights and left reluctantly on Monday mornings. After we moved here full-time, we reminded ourselves that people plan all year to spend a week or two with what we have every day. Soon or later, we will be faced with packing up and moving out, but until that happens we will regard each day as a special gift.

Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com