Sybil loved this time of year when rains pelted the ground and winter-weary soil drank to its content. The trees—barren and gray all winter—exploded with a verdant shade of green that existed only in the very earliest days of spring.
She had lived in the little house on Cedar Avenue for sixty-two springs—first with her husband, then with her six children. As her babies grew up and moved out one by one, Sybil adjusted to the emptying house. After her Ronald died six years ago, the house seemed to grow larger and lonelier with each passing season.
Still, Sybil looked forward to spring. Her garden was her refuge from the echoing rooms of that deserted house. It was her oasis from the arthritis and the rheumatism and the cataracts that were a daily reminder that her best years were behind her. In her garden, surrounded on all sides by new life, Sybil felt like a young woman again.
On this particular sunny day in late March, Sybil sat on a bench in her garden planting tiny seeds for her spring flower beds. She could already smell the echinacea and lavender that would be blooming in a month’s time. She could envision the bright daisies and asters that would soon fill her back yard with color and life.
As she hunched over with her trowel in hand, Sybil heard a voice behind her. “Sybil, you have to come see this.” She looked up to find her neighbor, Hector, peering at her across the picket fence.
Sybil smiled at him. A widower and an avid gardener like Sybil, Hector was one of the few friends she had left. “Hello, Hector. What is it you think I need to see?”
Hector was not smiling. As a matter of fact, he looked a bit disheveled. His thick salt and pepper hair was standing in disarray on top of his head. He was wearing the old denim overalls he always wore when he worked in his yard, but Sybil noticed that one of the knees was newly ripped.
“You look a mess. What happened to you?” she asked.
“Can you just come and look? I don’t think I can explain it.” Hector gestured for Sybil to come to his back gate.
She shuffled through her neighbor’s gate and found Hector standing in the middle of the garden that covered most of his back yard. He had his thumbs hooked through the belt loops of his overalls and was staring at a patch of dirt in front of him. As Sybil approached, he turned to her, scratching his head with one hand and pointing to the ground with the other.
“What do you reckon that is right there?” he asked.
Sybil bent over to get a closer look at the shiny object lying in the middle of Hector’s garden. As she reached out to touch it, Hector quickly snatched her hand away.
“Watch out,” he warned. “It bites. Took a chunk out of my overalls and got a good taste of my knee, too.” Sybil hadn’t noticed before that the rip in the knee of Hector’s overalls was caked with dried blood.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. That’s why I wanted you to look at it. You know more about plants than anyone I know.”
“But…” Sybil wasn’t sure what to say. “But Hector…that’s not a plant.”
“I know, but it’s growing.”
“Growing? What do you mean?”
“I mean…look.” Hector pulled a gardening fork out of one of the many pockets in his dingy old overalls and poked the object in the side. As he did so, it made a quiet whimpering sound and jerked away from the fork. Sybil saw that it was not just lying on the ground in Hector’s garden. It appeared to actually be growing from roots in the soil.
“But…but how is that even possible?” Sybil asked.
“I tried digging it up. Threw it in the recycle bin yesterday. Then this morning, I came out here to find another one growing in its place. Oddest damn thing I’ve ever seen.”
It was the oddest thing Sybil had ever seen, too. The object—no larger than a soda can—appeared to be a…well, an actual soda can. Rather than bearing the logo of Coca-Cola or Pepsi or any soda known to Sybil, it was a solid sky blue can with a golden star emblazoned on the side. Tiny razor sharp teeth surrounded the rim of the can. There were no other markings to indicate where it came from or how it had ended up rooted in her neighbor’s garden.
“What do you think I should do, Sybil?”
Sybil coaxed a strand of silver hair behind her ear. “How in the world should I know?” she replied. Sybil had no experience with this sort of thing. She grew daises and lilies and the occasional tomato plant. If she were feeling especially adventuresome, she might plant some rhubarb. She had certainly never grown an aluminum can.
“You want to know the weird thing about this?”
Sybil couldn’t help smiling at Hector. “What could possibly be weirder than a man-eating soda can sprouting from the ground?”
Hector chuckled. Sybil was glad to see the absurdity of this was not lost on her friend. “The can is full,” he said.
“You mean it has something in it?” Sybil asked.
“Yeah. When I dug up the one that was growing here yesterday, it was full.”
“Full of what?”
“I don’t know. I was afraid to pop the top and see.”
Sybil looked from Hector to the soda can sprouting from the ground and back to Hector again. “Well,” she said. “I think we need to solve this mystery.”
“You mean…you mean pop the top?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
Sybil watched as Hector, on her insistence, pulled a shovel from his gardening shed and dug a wide hole around the soda can, careful not to get close enough to give the can a go at his other knee. He uprooted the can and carefully laid it on the ground next to the newly gaping hole in his garden bed.
He turned to Sybil. “So how do we pop the top without getting bitten?
Sybil thought for a moment. “Oven mitts! We’ll use oven mitts. Wait here and keep an eye on it. I’ll run home and grab some.”
Of course, “run home” was a bit of a misnomer with Sybil’s arthritis and rheumatism. Twenty minutes later, she re-emerged in Hector’s back yard to find him sitting in a lawn chair next to the soda can, casually drinking a Coke.
“I’m not so sure about this, Sybil,” he said.
“It’ll be fine,” she assured him. She handed Hector two oven mitts, a matching carnation pink striped apron, and a set of tongs.
He looked at her dubiously. “What’s the apron for?”
“Well…” She waved her hand in the air as if his question were ridiculous. “One can never be too careful with these things.”
Hector began to protest, but obviously thought better of it upon seeing the determined look on his neighbor’s face. He donned the pink apron, pulled an oven mitt onto each hand and grabbed the tongs from Sybil with the steely resolve of a man ready to go to war.
As Sybil watched from a safe distance, Hector wrestled with the soda can. The oven mitts proved difficult. They limited Hector’s dexterity and caused the can to land repeatedly with a thud on the soft ground. Sybil could have sworn—as the can rolled toward her with each thud—that it was angling for her. Of course, that was crazy, but no crazier than her neighbor’s obscenity-infused combat with a living soda can.
Eventually, covered in sweat and spouting words that made Sybil blush, Hector was able to manipulate the tongs to pop the top on the hawkish can. When he did so, the can gave up all pretext of fighting and relaxed in Hector’s mitt-covered hand.
Sybil was standing at the ready with a glass. Hector poured the contents of the can into the glass and the two friends inhaled its heady aroma. The liquid exploded with color. It consisted of a myriad of shades that swirled and twirled, disappeared and reappeared. Every color of spring—every hue that enlivened Sybil’s springtime garden—was present in the shimmering liquid.
“It’s spring’s elixir,” Sybil whispered. She began to put the glass to her lips to taste, for the first time, spring itself. Hector grabbed her arm.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t know what this is. We don’t know if it’s even safe. It could be poisonous.”
“It’s not poisonous,” Sybil said. “Did you smell that glorious scent?”
“I don’t like this. I don’t think you should… ”
Sybil straightened her arthritic knees and unfurled her osteoporotic spine to stand her full 4 feet, 11 inches. “Well, it’s lucky for me I’m a grown woman and don’t need your permission.” Sybil once again put the glass to her lips, this time swallowing the resplendent liquid.
Spring’s elixir, as Sybil had so optimistically dubbed it, did not have quite the effect she expected. Sybil thought she would feel breezy and bright, abloom with light and life. She expected to feel young again—rejuvenated by spring’s tender fertility.
Instead, she clutched her throat and fell to the ground.
Dead.
When Sybil awoke from her unfortunate demise, she found herself lying in her garden. Bewildered and slightly woozy, she sat up. She looked around the garden to find that all of the flowers she had planted earlier that day were in full, brilliant bloom. The yellow daisies stood tall and dignified. The asters turned bright purple faces toward the sun. The smell of lavender that wafted from the far end of the garden to land upon Sybil’s nose was nothing short of intoxicating. Spring had sprung in breathtaking glory.
“Syb? Is that you?”
Sybil knew that voice. The sonorous baritone had been grafted into her memory and tattooed onto her heart when she was no more than seventeen years old. For fifty-six years, it was the first voice Sybil heard every morning when she woke up and the last voice to tell her good-night every evening.
She turned to find her Ronald standing at the other end of the garden. “Is that really you?” he asked again.
Sybil stood, painlessly for the first time in years. She walked toward Ronald, wanting desperately to believe that he was real. She placed her hand on his scraggy face and looked into his brown eyes. “Ronald? It can’t be…can it?”
“It’s me, honey.”
“But how?”
Ronald reached for Sybil’s hands and smiled at her. “This is your spring, Syb.”
Sybil didn’t understand. She knew it was spring. Spring had come and gone six times since Ronald had died, and not once had he come back to her. Until today.
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t, dear, but you will. Today is the first day of the spring that never ends.”
“Am I dead, Ronald?” Sybil was surprisingly unafraid.
“Yes, you died, but you aren’t really dead. You are no deader than the trees that turn gray and lifeless in the winter, only to burst with color again in the spring. You died today, but you were also born today.” Ronald winked at her. “Crazy, huh?”
“So what do we do now?” Sybil asked.
“Hmmm….” Ronald looked around the yard. “Feel like doing a little gardening?”
Sybil laughed—an easy laugh. A frolicking, verdant laugh that filled her garden with joy. She felt young again. She felt alive in a way she had never felt before her death.
Spring had that effect on Sybil.
She had lived in the little house on Cedar Avenue for sixty-two springs—first with her husband, then with her six children. As her babies grew up and moved out one by one, Sybil adjusted to the emptying house. After her Ronald died six years ago, the house seemed to grow larger and lonelier with each passing season.
Still, Sybil looked forward to spring. Her garden was her refuge from the echoing rooms of that deserted house. It was her oasis from the arthritis and the rheumatism and the cataracts that were a daily reminder that her best years were behind her. In her garden, surrounded on all sides by new life, Sybil felt like a young woman again.
On this particular sunny day in late March, Sybil sat on a bench in her garden planting tiny seeds for her spring flower beds. She could already smell the echinacea and lavender that would be blooming in a month’s time. She could envision the bright daisies and asters that would soon fill her back yard with color and life.
As she hunched over with her trowel in hand, Sybil heard a voice behind her. “Sybil, you have to come see this.” She looked up to find her neighbor, Hector, peering at her across the picket fence.
Sybil smiled at him. A widower and an avid gardener like Sybil, Hector was one of the few friends she had left. “Hello, Hector. What is it you think I need to see?”
Hector was not smiling. As a matter of fact, he looked a bit disheveled. His thick salt and pepper hair was standing in disarray on top of his head. He was wearing the old denim overalls he always wore when he worked in his yard, but Sybil noticed that one of the knees was newly ripped.
“You look a mess. What happened to you?” she asked.
“Can you just come and look? I don’t think I can explain it.” Hector gestured for Sybil to come to his back gate.
She shuffled through her neighbor’s gate and found Hector standing in the middle of the garden that covered most of his back yard. He had his thumbs hooked through the belt loops of his overalls and was staring at a patch of dirt in front of him. As Sybil approached, he turned to her, scratching his head with one hand and pointing to the ground with the other.
“What do you reckon that is right there?” he asked.
Sybil bent over to get a closer look at the shiny object lying in the middle of Hector’s garden. As she reached out to touch it, Hector quickly snatched her hand away.
“Watch out,” he warned. “It bites. Took a chunk out of my overalls and got a good taste of my knee, too.” Sybil hadn’t noticed before that the rip in the knee of Hector’s overalls was caked with dried blood.
“What is it?” she asked.
“I don’t know. That’s why I wanted you to look at it. You know more about plants than anyone I know.”
“But…” Sybil wasn’t sure what to say. “But Hector…that’s not a plant.”
“I know, but it’s growing.”
“Growing? What do you mean?”
“I mean…look.” Hector pulled a gardening fork out of one of the many pockets in his dingy old overalls and poked the object in the side. As he did so, it made a quiet whimpering sound and jerked away from the fork. Sybil saw that it was not just lying on the ground in Hector’s garden. It appeared to actually be growing from roots in the soil.
“But…but how is that even possible?” Sybil asked.
“I tried digging it up. Threw it in the recycle bin yesterday. Then this morning, I came out here to find another one growing in its place. Oddest damn thing I’ve ever seen.”
It was the oddest thing Sybil had ever seen, too. The object—no larger than a soda can—appeared to be a…well, an actual soda can. Rather than bearing the logo of Coca-Cola or Pepsi or any soda known to Sybil, it was a solid sky blue can with a golden star emblazoned on the side. Tiny razor sharp teeth surrounded the rim of the can. There were no other markings to indicate where it came from or how it had ended up rooted in her neighbor’s garden.
“What do you think I should do, Sybil?”
Sybil coaxed a strand of silver hair behind her ear. “How in the world should I know?” she replied. Sybil had no experience with this sort of thing. She grew daises and lilies and the occasional tomato plant. If she were feeling especially adventuresome, she might plant some rhubarb. She had certainly never grown an aluminum can.
“You want to know the weird thing about this?”
Sybil couldn’t help smiling at Hector. “What could possibly be weirder than a man-eating soda can sprouting from the ground?”
Hector chuckled. Sybil was glad to see the absurdity of this was not lost on her friend. “The can is full,” he said.
“You mean it has something in it?” Sybil asked.
“Yeah. When I dug up the one that was growing here yesterday, it was full.”
“Full of what?”
“I don’t know. I was afraid to pop the top and see.”
Sybil looked from Hector to the soda can sprouting from the ground and back to Hector again. “Well,” she said. “I think we need to solve this mystery.”
“You mean…you mean pop the top?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
Sybil watched as Hector, on her insistence, pulled a shovel from his gardening shed and dug a wide hole around the soda can, careful not to get close enough to give the can a go at his other knee. He uprooted the can and carefully laid it on the ground next to the newly gaping hole in his garden bed.
He turned to Sybil. “So how do we pop the top without getting bitten?
Sybil thought for a moment. “Oven mitts! We’ll use oven mitts. Wait here and keep an eye on it. I’ll run home and grab some.”
Of course, “run home” was a bit of a misnomer with Sybil’s arthritis and rheumatism. Twenty minutes later, she re-emerged in Hector’s back yard to find him sitting in a lawn chair next to the soda can, casually drinking a Coke.
“I’m not so sure about this, Sybil,” he said.
“It’ll be fine,” she assured him. She handed Hector two oven mitts, a matching carnation pink striped apron, and a set of tongs.
He looked at her dubiously. “What’s the apron for?”
“Well…” She waved her hand in the air as if his question were ridiculous. “One can never be too careful with these things.”
Hector began to protest, but obviously thought better of it upon seeing the determined look on his neighbor’s face. He donned the pink apron, pulled an oven mitt onto each hand and grabbed the tongs from Sybil with the steely resolve of a man ready to go to war.
As Sybil watched from a safe distance, Hector wrestled with the soda can. The oven mitts proved difficult. They limited Hector’s dexterity and caused the can to land repeatedly with a thud on the soft ground. Sybil could have sworn—as the can rolled toward her with each thud—that it was angling for her. Of course, that was crazy, but no crazier than her neighbor’s obscenity-infused combat with a living soda can.
Eventually, covered in sweat and spouting words that made Sybil blush, Hector was able to manipulate the tongs to pop the top on the hawkish can. When he did so, the can gave up all pretext of fighting and relaxed in Hector’s mitt-covered hand.
Sybil was standing at the ready with a glass. Hector poured the contents of the can into the glass and the two friends inhaled its heady aroma. The liquid exploded with color. It consisted of a myriad of shades that swirled and twirled, disappeared and reappeared. Every color of spring—every hue that enlivened Sybil’s springtime garden—was present in the shimmering liquid.
“It’s spring’s elixir,” Sybil whispered. She began to put the glass to her lips to taste, for the first time, spring itself. Hector grabbed her arm.
“What are you doing?”
“What do you mean?”
“We don’t know what this is. We don’t know if it’s even safe. It could be poisonous.”
“It’s not poisonous,” Sybil said. “Did you smell that glorious scent?”
“I don’t like this. I don’t think you should… ”
Sybil straightened her arthritic knees and unfurled her osteoporotic spine to stand her full 4 feet, 11 inches. “Well, it’s lucky for me I’m a grown woman and don’t need your permission.” Sybil once again put the glass to her lips, this time swallowing the resplendent liquid.
Spring’s elixir, as Sybil had so optimistically dubbed it, did not have quite the effect she expected. Sybil thought she would feel breezy and bright, abloom with light and life. She expected to feel young again—rejuvenated by spring’s tender fertility.
Instead, she clutched her throat and fell to the ground.
Dead.
When Sybil awoke from her unfortunate demise, she found herself lying in her garden. Bewildered and slightly woozy, she sat up. She looked around the garden to find that all of the flowers she had planted earlier that day were in full, brilliant bloom. The yellow daisies stood tall and dignified. The asters turned bright purple faces toward the sun. The smell of lavender that wafted from the far end of the garden to land upon Sybil’s nose was nothing short of intoxicating. Spring had sprung in breathtaking glory.
“Syb? Is that you?”
Sybil knew that voice. The sonorous baritone had been grafted into her memory and tattooed onto her heart when she was no more than seventeen years old. For fifty-six years, it was the first voice Sybil heard every morning when she woke up and the last voice to tell her good-night every evening.
She turned to find her Ronald standing at the other end of the garden. “Is that really you?” he asked again.
Sybil stood, painlessly for the first time in years. She walked toward Ronald, wanting desperately to believe that he was real. She placed her hand on his scraggy face and looked into his brown eyes. “Ronald? It can’t be…can it?”
“It’s me, honey.”
“But how?”
Ronald reached for Sybil’s hands and smiled at her. “This is your spring, Syb.”
Sybil didn’t understand. She knew it was spring. Spring had come and gone six times since Ronald had died, and not once had he come back to her. Until today.
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course you don’t, dear, but you will. Today is the first day of the spring that never ends.”
“Am I dead, Ronald?” Sybil was surprisingly unafraid.
“Yes, you died, but you aren’t really dead. You are no deader than the trees that turn gray and lifeless in the winter, only to burst with color again in the spring. You died today, but you were also born today.” Ronald winked at her. “Crazy, huh?”
“So what do we do now?” Sybil asked.
“Hmmm….” Ronald looked around the yard. “Feel like doing a little gardening?”
Sybil laughed—an easy laugh. A frolicking, verdant laugh that filled her garden with joy. She felt young again. She felt alive in a way she had never felt before her death.
Spring had that effect on Sybil.
