Yesterday was one of those pre-spring days that I love. Blue skied without a cloud in sight, warm enough to get away with wearing a lighter weight jacket with layers underneath, feeling optimistically cheerful while waiting for the bus to go down to the center of this urban area for a cup of tea and wait for my partner to be done with work for the night. Just knowing that the spring equinox was today was enough to put me in a good mood.
When we got the first twenty-six inches of snow and the city ground to a halt in January, I didn’t realize how badly the end of winter was going to weigh on me. And really, with almost no snow for the first months, the cold temperatures felt bearable and as I struggled to hold the areas of my life that were falling apart in other grandiose ways together, winter seemed like the least of my problems. And then of course I got the other pieces of myself to fit back together in their jigsaw puzzle and with cautious optimism laid a thin layer of modge podge over the top right as the flakes began to fall and this hell of a winter that had apparently just been saving everything up for its last six weeks unleashed itself with a fury upon Boston. All I can think now is thank god for that thin layer of glue for holding me together until spring because now that it seems certain that spring will indeed arrive on this coast, everything just feels like it’s becoming easier to deal with again when for a while I wasn’t sure we’d make it through.
And of course today, being the actual equinox, brings with it another layer of snow depth still to be determined which does put a slight cramp in my spring-welcoming plans since it is the sort of weather that makes me want to hole up inside where it is warm and dry. Still, I think back to a month ago when I was making snow angels literally standing up while leaning against snow banks and a dusting of snow suddenly doesn’t feel like it will crush my spirit quite so easily. I’m able to remember how perfectly blue the sky was yesterday and hold onto that despite the less than choice weather conditions outside my door currently.
(The above image is of myself making a snow angel against a six foot pile of snow standing up.)