This weekend, it was warm. Not just not freezing, but actual warmth. Going out into the sunshine, I meandered through the neighborhood and saw buds, tiny leaves working their way out, leaving a delicate green tinge on branches that have been dead for months. Life is coming back.
In a raised flower bed that is someone's downtown garden, the tree is still dormant, but below, dotting the flat, grey earth are tiny blue flowers. I don't know what kind they are, but it doesn't matter - they are joy.
I turn a corner and the delicate scent of manure comes toward me on the breeze - somewhere, someone has been gardening and after six months of smelling nothing but cold and snow and exhaust, this smells like green to come, smells of promise. Inside of me, something tight is starting to let go.
I pass a tulip and then another one, bright yellow and red bouncing off my retina, my eyes unused to such exuberance after half a year of monochrome and I drink it in, can feel the colour entering my body, suffusing every part of me, bringing hope.
The vendors are there for the Sunday antique market, bringing treasures and trash and a girl playing the guitar sings Joy to the World. I drop a toonie in the guitar case in among the other changes sparkling in the sun, we exchange smiles of thanks and carrying the song with me, I hum my way down the street.
In the park, on a field of what used to be white, but what is now grass beginning to look green, the dogs are playing, chasing balls, chasing each other. I sit under my tree, the place I sit almost every afternoon in the summer, even if it is just for half an hour, to connect to the earth, connect to something larger than myself, to find the peace inside I find only here and there it is again. Small, a trickle only, but I can feel it seeping into me the way of thirsty plant drinks water. A dog sees me, comes bounding towards me, chewing its rubber ball and drooling on my legs, inviting play and I laugh.
I walk home again, my heart swelling, my soul turning outward, I am opening up and I realized that somewhere, deep inside, I had thought winter would never end. And now I know it has and soon, the world will thrum with life again.
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