March is the hinge between winter and spring. One day I'm shivering in my winter coat and hat and two days later the sun warms my shoulders clad in a light sweater. The wind roars and then settles into a gentle breeze, sometimes in the same day. The temperatures rise and fall and then rise again. Snow follows sleet and then turns to rain. The cranes fly. They stop in the Platte River Valley to rest and feed before resuming their journey. Light, not temperature, guides their transition between southern and northern habitats.
This March feels like a season of transition between pandemic living to whatever lifestyle comes next. Vaccination, although it brings a sense of relief, doesn't erase all of my low level Covid anxiety. Covid-19 is a still a nasty disease and uncertainty remains. While the disease touched our extended families, everyone has recovered. It could have been otherwise. Vaccination does not erase the loss of life, health, or livelihood experienced by so many. Still, the news about vaccine efficacy is encouraging. I am hopeful that vaccinated and masked we can travel soon. More than anything I want to see my family, near and far.
Like Spring, this season of transition will bring ups and downs. Standing on a soapbox looking out at the green creeping into the landscape, I choose cautious thoughtful hope. One way or another travel protocols, routines, friendships, and milestone celebrations will rearrange themselves. While I follow the CDC guidelines, I work on kindness, respect, and grace to move through this transition. In the meantime, the daffodils out back might bloom today. Two weeks from today, another vaccinated friend and I will meet (not in a coffee shop) for a cup of tea and long catch-up.
Ever so gently, placing one foot in front of the other, I find my way. I wish the same for you. Safe travels. Namaste.
I've spent much of March commenting on the changeable weather, but you put it most appropriately by classifying March as the hinge. There does have to be some transition time between winter and spring and we are lucky enough to be making the change. Safe travels to you, too, Jane wherever your post-vaccination travel may take you. We get our second shots next week, and two weeks after that I am making an appt. for a haircut. Then I will contemplate what visiting nearby family and Ryan might look like. It's another transition, kind of into the unknown and not exactly normal, but hopefully better than staying completely locked up at home like before.
ReplyDeleteI so agree with you about Covid. It isn't over yet. There is so much we don't know! Still, we are moving forward.
ReplyDeleteA Hinge is such a great description for March...and also for our lives right now as we get vaccinated and begin to do things we have not done in a year! Curious but cautious!
ReplyDeletethis is a March I loved a lot, can't say why. Maybe because of covid and the fine focus of nature more so than ever because there is nothing else in life to focus on? hm...
ReplyDeleteThinking of March as a hinge is such an interesting way to think about it -- because the weather really does swing in both directions at this time of year! We started March with really nice weather, but it appears that this year it's going to go out like a lion, with rain today changing to snow overnight (some April Fool's joke, eh?).
ReplyDeleteLike you, I think we can see the light at the end of the COVID tunnel but am not letting up on being safe anytime soon. I am grateful that people getting vaccinated will enable us to safely gather with our immediate family, but it will be a long time before I feel comfortable being in a restaurant or going to a movie or generally being in large crowds.
What a beautiful post, Jane. I really appreciate your March-as-a-hinge analogy! It's just a perfect way to think about the month. Often, it seems to swing to the still-cold-and-snowy side of things, but this year it's been swinging the other way, and I am grateful. I hope you will soon be able to travel to visit your family again. I, too, am looking forward to the day I can visit my daughter in California again!
ReplyDeleteyes, Jane, yes! the weather and the "next steps" - I love your hinge analogy. I hope you can travel again soon. and feel cautiously optimistic that will happen!
ReplyDeleteYour March descriptions match mine here in Pittsburgh... sans Cranes. I would love to see them someday. I am with you on the lingering covid anxiety, yet vaccinations are good. I am with you (and Kym and Bonny) and yearn to see my far away kids!
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