Raise Your Glass to the Turning of The Seasons

Happy Vernal Equinox! 

I spent the day doing a bit of cleaning, and then spending time wandering by a pretty creek with a friend, and then came home to a quiet evening of reflection and conversations with distant friends. It was a good way for me to commence this new season.

Growing up in Florida as I did, I never really experienced seasons. Or, if I did, they were of the "hot-hotter-hell-hurricane season" variety. So I didn't ever experience the hopeful green of spring, the lively but not killing warmth of summer, the colourful magic of fall, or the holy hush of a winter snow. None of those natural rhythms and routines and rituals were within my realm of experience--and even at a very young age, I felt like this was unnatural and wrong.

It wasn't until after I had moved to Indiana and endured the grim, grey, unrelenting chill of Midwestern winter that I was truly able to appreciate the hope and joy of a burgeoning Midwestern spring. And oddly, I feel like the two need each other--that we cannot really appreciate the joy of spring without having undergone the dark winter. Hello, metaphors, could you be more obvious?

(Now, imagine living in a time where food and warmth were genuinely scarce during the winter, and then I think we can perhaps really appreciate how extreme the joy of spring must have once been.)

Still, it has been rather a long and dark and lonely winter, moreso than usual, so I must admit that I greeted this first day of spring with more than a little...well, not joy, I don't have that much energy...but with extreme and pronounced pleasure. This beautiful first day of spring in 2021 here in Southern Indiana was one of the most fittingly lovely I've yet to encounter. The earth and trees are still bare and brown and grey, of course,  but the sky was a brilliant, cloudless blue; the air was crisp, the world touched with plenty of sunlight...and my spirits were raised by the news that on Monday, my age group will become eligible for the COVID vaccine here in Indiana.

It was perfectly fitting news to have on today, of all days. I certainly could have done without the grim isolation of this Coronavirus Winter, but I will admit, the spring is all the more joyful for knowing that it seems like we are coming to this cruel, blighted winter's end.