Midwest winters could lull you into a coma. After so many dreary gray days strung together you would kind of forget that there ever was anything else.
The plants never forgot, though. Every spring nature would snap her fingers to wake you up and let you know that just about anything is possible – even lush sunny days. It always seemed like a miracle to me when everything that had been dormant for so long would suddenly spring to life.
These days when I see the new leaves budding on the trees and the flowers start to unfurl, it reminds me of a line from a Buffalo Springfield song:
“There you stood on the edge of your feather,
Expecting to fly.”
Those little leaves and blossoms don’t just THINK they’re going to thrive and grow, they expect it. They expect to fly.
I think about that song every spring, but never more than this year, the spring of the coronavirus. The world has turned upside down, from the way we interact with each other to how we buy groceries. It’s a new normal that I suspect will shape our days long after the virus threat is over.
But you know what? My Japanese maples have new leaves that are uncurling more every day. The crocus have already come and gone. Ornamental grasses have bright green shoots reaching for the sun. Azalea blooms are popping out all over.
Every last living thing is expecting to fly, me included.
Note to self: take a cue from nature – she wrote the book on how to keep moving forward.