Welcome Spring

We welcome spring. The lawn is already greening. Daffodils and other bulb plants are up. I am so ready for spring. I feel I’ve earned it. I feel I’ve done all that I can do with winter and now it is time.

Winter was fine. It got so cold. There was snow in the air and on the ground. I saw the ponds freeze over and I enjoyed seeing skaters embracing all that winter seemed to offer. Fresh air with all fragrance driven from it. Notice that? There is no smell to a bitter cold breeze. The absence of flavor of smell is itself terrific.

I feel good about the snow shoveling I did and kept ahead of it.

Here is an even stronger feeling about winter: I endured. I prevailed. I hibernated. I also got a lot done. When the outside is a frozen winter land, and I don’t feel like going outside, I get things done inside.

It is a simple thought. And I apologize to some of you for taking your time on this. But it matters. Folks in other parts of the world, can only conceptualize what I am saying.

I lived it. I embraced it.

We feel good about having gone through winter completely. The only place where I hid from it was near my hot woodstove, in my little house.

So many of my contemporaries and many younger still, went somewhere warm. They got the chill out of their bones. They got the freeze out of their mind and went somewhere oblivious to the hunkering down, the dodging in and out of the lee side of a building, avoiding a strong bitter cold gusting wind.

It must have been wonderful.

Me? I was here. I was in the thick of winter from start to finish. I came in and out of those fearful moments when I thought frostbite had wiggled inside of my mittens and in my socks.

I zipped my coat up to the top often enough. I wrapped my neck with a scarf enough too.

I can do winter almost as well as someone else. No less, I am coming out of winter looking ahead for warmth. Like you. Like everyone else.

Hurrah for winter. I think winter defines me. It is a piece of me like a giant puzzle piece. There is enough of it in me to make a picture complete.

It is not profound. It is not a philosophical difference between myself and my friends. I think it is just deeper in me. I am not complete if I miss a day of winter. That may change next winter. I might go somewhere.

But in this moment I am feeling a level of completeness. I feel with spring I will blossom.