The First Stir
By Tatiana Scavnicky
Spring will soon bring tender colorful flowers and fresh green tree buds. Her arrival is counted on, almost taken for granted. I’m a summer girl. My official yearly emergence is the first day I can make it under the sun with my notebook, pen and magazine or two, like this one.
But spring, she makes me forget the cold harsh winter. Her almost warm sunny days slowly erase biting zero degree winds, and months of still white and gray that make us retreat indoors and into ourselves. We mine a year’s gold at the Harvest Moon Fall Equinox and celebrate the dead at Samhain or Halloween. A yearly emotional Cancer Full Moon Winter Solstice holds us as we miss loved ones. We mourn their loss and begin the year’s goodbye. At Yule or Christmastime, it seems as if holiday lights set aglow the giving spirit of universal love. And every New Year like clockwork, just a few days in, a magical new moon is the promise of a new beginning.
The season’s turn and things happen. Hard things. Winter is harder on broken bones, flu bugs, and lonely hearts. But spring, she seduces us every time, charming fresh bright electric hope right out of us. Tender shoots burst through the ground and the months leading up to this arrival are forgotten. Plans are made. New opportunities feel right on time, like a great drummer who’s in the pocket and a first kiss that led to new love.
Spring is the first stir from a winter’s sleep. A wake-up call, and everywhere we look, Mother Earth confirms that life starts over. Cells regenerate and hearts are unbroken. We can forgive and be forgiven, and the past is laid to rest yet again, underneath the ground.
