Springtime

Everyone will tell you this has been a hard winter; eyes cast first downward and then away, since no one is ever referring to the short bouts of dry, stinging cold we spent three months feeling sheepish about suffering. Spring can’t come fast enough.

Daily living all too easily takes on the feeling of a extended intermission before the elusive third act. We seek, we strive, we taste victory and defeat, but at three in the morning we wonder when we’ll finally be able to rest, when we’ll finally see the plot resolution unfold before us. Uncertainty about the future is responsible for more insomnia than all the coffee beans in Columbia.

No one knows what the garden will look like this year, and we’re all frantic to see what’s been percolating beneath the ground while we’ve been stewing beneath the blankets. But the soil is still cold, and so is the wind, and it’s way too early to imagine exactly what we’ll be watering in our flip flops this summer.

It’s so easy to forget that winter and spring have been around ages before us and will last long after we’ve done our time. We worry and wonder and wring our hands, and the garden comes back every year, and it’s never quite as we imagined it, but it’s almost always better in some way we never thought to wish for.

Perhaps we just need a reminder. A warm breeze carrying the smell of sweetened soil, an afternoon that finds your sweater cast aside, the first new leaves beginning their eternal lime green march up the ridges. An ancient cellular call stirred by light, warmth and dogwood blossoms.

Hope springs eternal, my darlings, and spring is coming.

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