I like spring.

And I’m welcoming the sunshine with open arms and an open sunroof.

Today I made a labor intensive meal and it was pretty delicious.

In our science lesson today we talked about barometric pressure.  (Well, the author of the book “talked” about barometric pressure because my brain hardly comprehends how barometric pressure operates or what it actually is.)  Anyway, there was a part of the lesson that spoke about the physical effects weather can have on people and I’m telling you, from personal experience, weather does change me.  That’s for certain.

 

 

I love the promises of spring.  Of blooming flowers and afternoons in the sunshine.  Walks in the woods.  Eating lunch on a blanket.  The privilege of Easter.  Days holding tightly onto sunshine longer each evening.  The birds singing with more boldness each morning and that one bright cardinal that loves to sit on the camilla bush right outside my bedroom window every morning, like we’re buddies or something.  (We are buddies, actually, he and I.)

 

 

This weekend my friends and I enjoyed a spontaneous lunch together, three grown up women and more crepes than we needed and the freshest orange juice you can imagine.  Not all laughter and jokes dominated our conversation, because not all rainbows and unicorns are living in our backyards, but it still was a lunch filled with a certain light and hope and comfort to it, nonetheless.

When I purchased our milk from our favorite little roadside store, I was ecstatic to see immense and bright local strawberries sitting in their traditional white buckets and I shared my exuberance with the two gentleman who run the shop and offer my children far too many pieces of free double bubble gum each week.  They’re good old boys and I’m glad to see them each week and they seem glad to see us too.

 

 

I have this trunk at my house.  It’s legitimately crammed with notes and cards and letters.  Journals and my diploma.  Old photos of my mom and her siblings.  Notes from Susan in fifth grade and Sara in seventh grade and the card where I told Kevin that we were expecting baby number five.  There are old love letters and old break up letters and histories both worth telling and maybe worth not telling.  An old friend from what feels like a life time ago reached out and we spent hours reminiscing and it is shocking how decades can stack on top of decades in such a hurried fashion.  It’s a little like that Jenga block game, you know.  Towering wooden blocks that could topple over in a loud pile when you pull this piece out or push that piece in.  But there’s that edge to the game too, right?  That tension you feel when you push that one teetering block out to the side and nothing happens and the tower remains stable and you let out your breath and say, “Will you look at that?”

 

 

At that weekend lunch I think we maybe talked a little bit about a life that sometimes feels full of the highs and full of the lows versus a life that sometimes feels like a flat and steady line across the range of years.  The rides up and the rides down can make my stomach hurt a little, but I’ve never been much for living on a flat line.

 

 

If it’s whiplash you get from both loving parts of your life and not loving other parts of your life, I guess I’ll have to deal with that.  The whiplash.  The juxtaposition.  The duality.  The on one hand.  The incongruity of my days.

The last few days have felt like spring.  Like hope.  Like the promise of better days and that feeling you get when your hair is dried wild and free because your windows are all down and you’re playing that one song (“White Flag” for me) and wearing your sunglasses and the roads are clear and the mountains are high and you’re not running late and no one’s waiting on you for anything.

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