The back door creaks as I step out into the morning chill. After a week of rain, the clouds have finally cleared, leaving the sky washed a clean, clear blue. The long months of winter grey and white are finally over, and the world is full of color: purple crocuses, the fresh green of the spring grass, the forsythia bushes bright with yellow blooms.
It's really spring, finally and truly spring at last.
I love spring. I love the subtle, shy signs of new life: the buds on trees, the tiny flowers peeking up from the grass, the call of the geese flying overhead. I love how it steals in little by little as the days grow longer and the earth comes to life. Every year I welcome spring with open arms. After months of huddling inside, I love to venture out into the warm sunshine and see what new miracles have sprung up overnight.
But this year, I confess, I feel different. The long months of hardship and loneliness have felt like one long, endless winter, and now that it's finally over I find that my old happy trust in the turning of the seasons is gone. This year I find myself hesitating at the door. Spring is the same as always - it's me, I think, that has changed.
I was surprised at myself at first. The morning I first heard the geese honking as they passed overhead, suddenly I found myself close to tears.
What's wrong with me? I wondered. Why, this year, does spring feel so reckless? Why don't I trust those fragile buds on the branches, the returning birds, the warming air? Why is it so hard to believe that spring is really here at last?
It's a strange feeling, this caution. After hunkering down for so many months, I think I've forgotten the eagerness of hope. This year of loss and loneliness has left me wary, even of changes we've longed for.
Our world has been turned upside down this year. So many things we've always taken for granted have been snatched away. We've learned over these past months the stern lessons of caution and sacrifice. We've lived the careful life of distance, standing apart from each other, enduring day after day with seemingly no end in sight.
But the signs of hope are unfolding slowly around us. The hard struggle of the vaccine rollout is slowly reaping results, and with each small step we're inching our way toward an end to this long winter. Little by little, hope and spring have crept back together.
Hope is beckoning us out of our shelters. It's tugging at our sleeves and urging us to step out - cautiously - into the sunshine. Little by little we're being invited to come together at last. It won't happen all at once. It'll take one small step at a time, one careful choice after the next, but slowly, day by day, the life we've gone without for so many months is beginning to be possible again.
This morning I came to a decision. I think now I'm ready to be brave enough to hope.
So I sat down and wrote a date on my long-empty calendar: a meeting - a real one, in a room! I'm actually going to do it: dig out my town clothes and venture out and see people I haven't seen face-to-face in months.
Now I think I'll step out into the fresh, green world and take a walk.
Comments