Spring should be a time of renewal. After all, it’s traditionally associated with themes of new life, hope, love and promises of better times ahead.
It’s the season when temperatures start to warm up and the earth slowly awakens from its deep rest, and tender green tendrils of life and optimism start to push towards the surface.
The sun returns. The balance of nature tips towards abundance rather than hardship and survival.
It’s a time of year many look forward to, and understandably so: Easter may bring good times with family, the school year comes closer to its end and dreamy thoughts of summer vacation plans may begin to blossom.
Although spring has had a false start here in Central Alberta, some may be starting to feel their inner cycle of renewal and growth starting to germinate. They are the hopeful, fresh green sprout, itching to stretch out and rejoin the light.
Me? I’m feeling more like the ground lately: Colourless, trodden down, parched for sustenance and groaning to return to deep, uninterrupted slumber. Last year’s crops have long been harvested and there’s been no remediation.
Motherhood can sometimes be like that — life, in general, can be like that — those times where much is needed but you feel depleted, like you don’t have anything to give, and you can’t help feeling like you’re failing miserably at every turn.
So go on and unfurl your pretty little petals you bright, pert flower. I think I will just lie here a while longer and become one with the soil, nestled in its dark embrace.
While the world is speeding up, I want to slow down; and I haven’t been going that fast to begin with!
Perhaps diverging from popular sentiment, I’ve always found spring a tiny bit melancholy; not because I disliked the start of new growth, but because it’s so fleeting, if you blink, you’re bound to miss it.
I dreaded spring this year, however. If will alone could stop the turning of the planets, I would have stalled the relentless march of time. I did not want to, could not bear the thought of, it being a full year since my mother had passed and we’d laid her to rest.
And yet, nothing ever stands still. Even the ground can eventually be moved.
Grief isn’t something you can leave behind in winter. It doesn’t really have a beginning, middle and an end. It doesn’t obediently proceed in an orderly manner like the calendar that commands the cycle of our lives. It just does what it wants, when it wants.
While I may not be bursting with enthusiasm and energy at this turning of the season, I do have much to be grateful for.
I have three beautiful, wonderful, healthy … and cheeky … boys, who truly are growing like weeds. I have a job that I love, that has been flexible with me. I have opportunities to be of use to others.
Though some things have ended, I’ve got to believe there are happy memories still to come, new experiences and new growth worth pushing ahead for.
Winter is hard for many, whether just because of the cold and increased difficulty with everyday tasks, or because they suffer from seasonal depression, or just find the holidays difficult to get through.
If you faced a long winter of sorrow, isolation, mental health struggles or loneliness, hold on. The sun will return to warm your face. (Even if it is taking its sweet time to show up!)
And if you’re not ‘sprouting’ just yet, don’t worry. Be kind to yourself.
You may not be a prairie crocus, one of the first flowers to bloom in spring, but hey, maybe you’re a root vegetable, meant to be harvested in the fall, after the first frost, when you’ll be all the richer for it.
Holding onto summer’s warmth longer than most, insulated safely in the soil, you’ll nourish others with your glow all winter long.