Sweetest Song of Promise

“Si quaeris peninsulam amoenam circumspice.”

“If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.”

Michigan’s motto.

And since 1931, the state bird is the American Robin, the sign of spring and the song of summer.

“Cheerily-cheer-up-cheerio!” The male’s courting song is the sign that winter is ending and the time of lilacs and green grass and summer are coming.

And happens every year, no matter how cold and miserable the winter has been. Or is.

They’re easily recognized by the hopping and head-tipping as each bird listens for the sound of earthworms, and by their rust-red shirts. Not related to the English robin, our spring and summer visitor is actually a thrush.

During all my years in the Heights, I looked forward to the first sign of robins returning from their winters in the south—Texas, Florida, or as far south as Guatemala.

They must be tougher than they look to fly so far to court and raise fledglings in the north, as far as Canada. I’ve read that they can live in Michigan year-round, but never saw any until very early spring.

When they appear in Florida, they don’t sing, but land in yards as a flock, gobbling and moving on, much too early, I tell them every year, but they’re in a hurry to get to their real homes, even if they have to pick through snow for their meals.

By February and March, they’re looking for bugs, seeds, fruit, mates, and material for nests. The males return first, duke out their nesting places, and practice their tunes to impress the ladies. Like the rest of us, females choose their mates based on looks, home location, and song.

Oh, that song.

To my ears, the robins’ cheerful tune is fresh and sweet and makes me homesick for my childhood summers, for raising our children in the same house, sending them to the same schools, sometimes to the same teachers.

When our parents bought the house on Caroline Street, the yard bloomed with fruit trees and tea roses, a black walnut, a catalpa, and a long backyard lined with rhubarb, catnip, and sumac. They planted a Scotch pine tree in the middle of the backyard, near the garage. We kids would jump over it on our way to the backyard, in spite of Mom’s reprimands.

Since the Scotch pine (or Scots pine or Baltic pine) can grow one- to two-feet a year, and reach 60 feet high and 20 feet wide, there came a season when none of us could jump over it. In fact, when our children were young, Dave had to cut off the bottom branches in order to see the backyard.

Children grow and change. Pine trees grow and change.

But the robin’s song is as fresh and familiar as my childhood days, when I heard them from my bedroom window, from the kitchen windows, from running up and down the street, or later, planting ferns and flowers around the house.

Cardinals announce morning. Mourning doves catch the imagination. Red-winged blackbirds have a water music I never tire of, but the robin’s song is summer.

Ernie Harwell.

Lawn mowing.

Robins.

So, look past the 15-20 degrees, with the low of 2 degrees tonight, the 70% chance of snow, to the promise of spring and green summer.

It’s mid-February. The song of the robins will uplift you any time now.

They promise.