Strong southwestern winds from Arizona and Utah made their way across the Kansas plains and rearranged the lawn furniture in the sitting area behind the house yesterday before pushing east to sway the dangling birdfeeders in the suburban yards of Pittsburgh and Vermont. Our cushion-less chairs tipped over, coming to rest in the leavings of last summer’s mulch, waiting for me to right them again. I thanked the sky for a reason to move my limbs and the ground below for holding me fast.

Just yesterday, in a pass around the west side of the house, I saw the tightly-packed leaves of this year’s daffodils standing hopeful and eager to please in their gravel-topped bed below the kitchen window. I swear to you, they hadn’t been up a few hours earlier. Now I’ll keep an eye out for the singular red-streaked yellow parrot tulip that grows on the steep hill above the meadow—she’s in there somewhere, I know. And who turned loose the flocks of wrens and redwing blackbirds and one magnificent pileated woodpecker knocking on the bark of a fallen black walnut down by the bridge? Two days ago, cardinals and tiny black-capped chickadees and laughing crows were the main event, as they have been for the past three months. When the shadow of a blue heron’s wingspan fully stretched out in flight slides across the still-brown grass and the hypnotic cheerful droning of hidden chorus frogs in the creek pulls you forward in a walking trance, you know that winter is getting ready to close the door behind itself (please, don’t slam it…) and leave you to revel wildly in this next season’s affairs. In an unexpected “not to be left out” moment, two of the three indoor Christmas cacti have each produced three blooms. I’m surrounded by the miracles of life.

Spring does this every time, and I chuckle inwardly at my fresh amazement. The crocuses and first bright green tips of wild garlic chives, the sun’s glowing generosity at both ends of the day, the trees along the ridge looking forward to getting dressed soon—all of it surprises me even though I’ve collected nearly sixty of these seasons in my bones (it’s so inspiring that in the middle of writing this reflection, I got up off the couch to make a batch of strawberry coconut almond birthday cake granola, assembled and in the oven in less than 20 minutes. Want some? Message me and we’ll work it out).

After the year we’ve had, individually and in common, this spring feels deeply and forever different from the others. I am wide awake in a technicolor dream (anyone else out there dream in color?) cherishing each view, my eyes stinging with grateful tears that I’m still here and survivor guilt tears that I’m, well, still here while others’ eyes uncomfortably register the empty chair at the table. Late last week, I’d just hung up after scheduling my two vaccine appointments (I don’t need to specify which vaccine now, do I?) and cued up on YouTube The Lion King’s opening “Circle of Life”, a hymn to all things sacred. I didn’t make it past the first refrain before I was sobbing at my home office desk in a face-drenched storm of release and mourning. This too is spring in all it’s glory—cleansing rains to wash away winter’s untended sorrows and repurpose them as life-giving tonic for every new leaf and sprout that calls this place home (It’s probably best that I ration my viewing of the fully vaccinated hug reunions that will flood social media in the weeks to come, if I’m ever to get the garden planted). With the last fragments of winter’s browns and grays as evidence to the contrary, spring, the Great Game-Changer, is about to unfurl its best on us again, and it will catch us happily off-guard. We’ll notice things we hadn’t seen the day before and convince ourselves that magic is real (yes, Hogwarts exists) and find all manner of reasons to be outside more than inside.

My daily walks will bear the weight of a new attentive spirit as I gather for the first time this year fresh images of a sleeping earth waking up to herself. In a sweet mix of new and familiar, she will once again lay at my feet her tender offspring in all forms—the spotted fawns and garlic mustard and morels and blue fragments of a robin’s egg at the base of the mulberry sapling off the front deck. I’ll do what I always do each spring. Drop to my knees, rise to my feet in a standing ovation of one and dance like everyone’s watching.