Spring is the waking up of our spirits after a long dark winter of rest. It is the beginning of fresh sap rising up through the dormant roots of sleeping plants. It is the harbinger of winters long dark evenings of cold that bring intimacy of all life causing many births in the month of March. It is the announcement of waking up all things that have lain in suspension over the cold days and it marks a passage of the soul that most people only have four score and ten times in their lives.

When looked at in the quantitative, it makes me wonder at everyone wishing for the passing of the seasons. I think seasons should be treasured and sipped slowly like a wonderful brandy at the end of the day. I have never been one to ‘wish my time away’. I have been one to mark that time, however, and to dwell upon it and whether or not I have made a dent of difference in anything over its course.

I realize that I have not to my knowledge. Time has crept by me like the sands squeezed in the hands of Edgar Allen Poe as he laments their holding in his wonderful poem ‘Alone’. Yes, another winter has passed and spring is upon me with things I need to attend to and things that I let weigh me down with their insistence that are ‘full of sound and fury signifying nothing’. Daily matters that truly amount to nil in the larger scheme of things. But, these nil matters are what constitutes the greater part of our lives. Without their minutiae we would not get by from day to day, dwelling on the larger things that truly boggle our minds would tax us to the utmost. The grander things bear scrutiny and cannot take over the minutiae in our lives lest we be swept away and lament the tides that have taken away our chances to make a difference. We are left with the beach of the ocean after a rain storm, never knowing if something leviathan may have walked on the sands during the night or if jellyfish and small creatures were the only ones there during its tempest. That in itself, is an awesome thought enough to boggle my mind, such as it is.

So. Spring is here. We make lists of things that need to be done and in our laxness we find we should have been list-making and doing these things while we were weighed down with snow and the bitter cold of winter and give up! Or rather I find that the case myself. My list? Gardening things that need dividing and distributed to my various flowering plant loving friends, getting my garden tilled for the advent of delicious vegetables that I would rather eat since they come from the efforts of my hands and I know what has been applied to them and how I have handled their care and yard machine upkeep. All these things need my attention. OH, along with the minutiae of housework, cleaning the nooks and crannies of the winters darkness from the kitchen, bedrooms, closets and house in general.

A ‘revitalization’ of the most propitious sort indeed. May each of our winter shadows be abolished by the bright sunlight of the spring days! As a ‘break’ I see this as an oxymoron. Waking up from our ‘long winters nap’ is harder than I supposed!

Happy Spring to all!