It’s so easy to forget in the midst of winter’s blanketed paralysis, that cold misery is temporary. As logs burn down to crumbles while our discomfort is being mocked outside by the ice that believes itself to be concrete, as if it had every intention of glazing the driveway and causing us to baby-step our ginger way until the end of time.
This hard-frozen, frigid (expletive deleted) winter annoyance feels like it’s iced over time itself and we’ll never be rid of its treacherous, slippery, butt-bruising blasts of arctic bellicosity. The older I get the more I fall for it, no pun intended. Through most winters, and this one was no exception, I get a little hangdog, a tad depressed. Optimism is just beyond the reach of my heavily gloved (and still chilly) fingers.
And yet, here we are. Early March – warming days – daffodils inching skyward. Hard but gradually softening buds on tree limbs. Daylight starting earlier and ending later. Mother Nature reminding once again that she may be older than the hills but she can still run circles around us.
I feel a little bit sorry for those who don’t live in a place like Kansas, where the seasons are so pronounced as they continually rotate around our emphatically undramatic landscape - each season making us look forward to the next with eagerness and, ok, sometimes a bit of dread.
Anyway, is it too early to wish you a happy spring? Nevertheless, that’s what I’m doing!
