“Pooka. From old Celtic mythology. A fairy spirit in animal form. Always very large. The pooka appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one at his own caprice. A wise but mischievous creature. Very fond of rum-pots, crackpots, and how are you, Mr. Wilson?”
Definition of Pooka as read by Mr. Wilson to Veta Louise Simmons in Harvey, by Mary Chase
I am mighty sick of Winter. I know the calendar suggests that it is technically Spring, but anyone believing that Spring has come to Humptulips County must have an abiding belief in the Tooth Fairy or in Pookas. I just returned from lunch and our wind has, if anything, gotten colder and more piercing than it was this morning. If Spring has come to Humptulips County, it is playing hide and seek with the residents.
I am more than ready for Spring and want it to come out of hiding. This Winter has been one of cold weather and an even colder economy. I will long remember this Winter both for its length and for the extent of its depressive manifestations. I am more than ready to run it out of town – on or off a rail.
This country needs Spring in a bad way. Now I am not completely nuts and am aware that the coming of Spring will not, in and of itself, cure the economy, but if its coming helps to put a smile on people’s faces and gives them a little hope in the ever-renewing cycle of life it might just help the economy’s recovery by the slightest bit. So there is even more reason to be anxious about Spring this year – more than the usual reason of simply being at one’s wits end because the sun hasn’t been seen in a clear blue sky at any time during the last 150 plus days.
The usual harbingers of Spring here in Humptulips County are calling out to little avail. The chorus frogs on my property sing their little hearts out every evening as they have since mid-February. Their singing seems, somehow, more desperate this year than exuberant, but sing they do each and every evening in a choral incantation to Spring. There were buds on many of the native rhododendrons and azaleas, and some of them have even survived the late frosts by clinging still to branches. Whether all of them will finally bud is open to question, but the sight of them still stirs hope that Spring will yet come forward. Last week, I saw my first robin and then, a day later, barn swallows darted around my car as I made my way home down our lane.
So I know that Spring will come, but this year’s arrival seems unusual. This Spring appears to be playing hard to get as if to make up for some previously perceived slight. This Spring first hints with a brief warm breeze and then hides behind days-long, cold wintry winds. This Spring is flirting with us for reasons as yet unknown. This Spring isn’t yet, and, when it finally arrives, may be as brief as the life of a Mayfly.
Nevertheless, I am eager for Spring to arrive, in whatever shape, form or guise it may eventually take. Perhaps our crummy economy has over heated my anxiety that something warm and pleasant should enter my life and I am simply too impatient for my own good. Perhaps my over-eagerness is the cause of my present dismay, and Spring will arrive in its usual manner – on the wings of a blustery warm wind sprinkling light rain as it blows by.
I remain confident that Spring will come this year, no matter how brief it may turn out to be; I just wish it would hurry up and get here for I am good and ready. Spring is not a will-of-the-wisp, but is real, both in terms of weather and emotional uplift. I just know it will be here eventually.
For I do believe in Pookas, as I have seen one. I had the privilege of seeing Helen Hayes, Jimmy Stewart, Peggy Cass and Jesse White revive Harvey as a stage play in 1969 and saw the play in Ann Arbor, Michigan before they took it to Broadway for a brief run. At the end of the play as the rest of the cast left the stage after taking their bows, Jimmy Stewart stopped his exit, returned as a solo to center stage, apologized to the curtain at stage rear for forgetting, and then motioned for Elwood P. Dowd’s friend to come forward – and that was when Harvey’s hat walked onto the stage and Harvey took his well-deserved bow to the audience. It was a piece of stage magic that I will always hold dear, and I much prefer to believe there really was a Pooka under that hat and smoke and mirrors played no part.
If I can maintain my belief in Pookas, I can certainly believe in the coming of Spring even in this most difficult of years.
