All right then

Every time my husband and I try to celebrate being married, someone seems to end up in the hospital.

I know this is happenstance. It's certainly not scientific.  But it makes trying to relax a tad nerve-wracking.

There's not much to report - it's nearly Easter, but it's been so cold here for so long that there are just a handful of crocuses blooming, nothing like the wild riot of spring green and bloom and flower I'm used to down south.  Somehow, despite some really great experiences and some excellent career excitments, I currently feel the way this Easter is looking - bare ground, barely thawed from the harsh ice and snow of winter.  I feel hardscrabble, flinty.

I don't feel bitter, however.  My New Year's Resolution was to make this the Year of No Bitterness, and that's happily progressing.  I go see plays with other people in them and don't resent their success.  I heard about good things for others and I wish them well.  (Ok, yes, you caught me, there are some exceptions, but I'm not bitter about those people, I just don't like them and don't want to see them rewarded.)

So, now that I've drawn the line - I'm thrilled with the thrilling things that have happened.  But suddenly I look around and I...I miss spring.  It's like remembering I'm exiled from my favorite place.  Is it getting older, that metaphorically I've passed spring and am well into autumn?  Is it just the effect of a cold cold winter?  Is it the impending sadness of inevitable death?  I don't think so - I think I want some EASTER up in here!

I've written about this before, about how Easter is really the best of holidays.  A Christ-child is great, a miracle of extra light for eight days is great, a day of atonement is a fantastic idea, a sugar feast is definitely my idea of awesome, I could go on and on BUT but but...you just can't beat triumph over death.  Death - the unbeatable foe, death is beaten, beaten by rebirth.  It's beautiful in a way that lasts, that transcends.  We need spring.  We need the hardscrabble ground to crack open to show us the flowers.

So hey, I'm grown up enough to admit that I'm basically all right, but not everything is how I wish it could be, and thinking about that, I'm tearing up.  There's a huge capacity for spring in my life, and I need it, I need it soon.

I don't go to church consistently anymore (which is strange because I was a very committed church-goer until I turned 30), but I will tell you this:  I think I'm going tomorrow.

And I think I'll probably weep, for all the things and people and relationships that die.  But I hope, oh, Lord I hope, I will leave with visions of eggs and bunnies and flowers and empty tombs and whatever other symbol I can clutch tight in my psyche of spring, the great rebirth, beginnings.

Beginnings.  May you all find some Easter, whatever you may call it, and however it manifests itself to you.