Mother! (#108)

Reflections on the reasons for a delayed spring. Plus: Climate science art.

“How about now, my child?”

Her breath is pregnant, almost ready to blow life into the papery reeds, the barren branches that aren’t yet supple with flowing nectar and tenderness, the licks of colour that touch the tips of the buds.

Because she’s pausing, leaving us in suspended animation, in the liminal space of Canadian spring.

She’s asking us if we’re ready to try again. Us, her errant offspring, who continue to disappoint her with each passing season. And yet, time and again, she dusts off her apron with a warm and weary smile and invites us to sit at the kitchen table and listen to her advice.

And we will try again. We always start out with good intentions to hear her wisdom and behave better. But I can tell that she is growing tired - tired of always asking us to put things away, to clean up after ourselves. It’s getting harder for her, this aging mother, this caregiver sandwiched between all the generations, with no respite.

Maybe that’s why spring is slower to start these days.

Maybe that’s why she sheds a few more tears when she thinks we’ve looked away.

“My child…how about now?”

A chill morning - figuratively and literally - spent with coffee last Wednesday before starting work meetings. Spring is trying so hard to emerge, but our mother is feeling lesss predictable these days. (Photo: Bryn Robinson, 2024)

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This Week in SciArt

It seems timely to bring up the clever and beautiful combinations of data and emotional messages in Jill Pelto’s climate science art. Line graphs depicting real data about ocean and global temperatures serve also as geographical features in watercolour landscape pieces. (You can check out more of Pelto’s climate science art here.)

Increasing Forest Fire Activity (Jill Pelto, 2015). From the artist: “This piece is inspired by two weeks I spent in Washington in August 2015. Massive forest fires raged throughout my stay, greeting me with many smoke-filled days…”

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