Hope Springs

I love the seasons...and New England does them well. Today I ran and it felt like for the first time in a long time that we'd shaken the cold and grey, we finally shrugged the last icy morning and that life had sprung. Blooming brambles cascaded over  broken rock wall...birds sang and busied themselves. And I took out my earphones as I ran past a marsh because the frog song was better then my music. 

I suppose the reason why spring feels so incredible here is because of the severity of winter. We feel on some level like we've earned it. We paid our dues of deep bundling, of bent heads in humid chill, of locked in stuffy days where the frost on the window pane was the only growing life outside. Of runny noses, and cold floors and early nights and dark mornings. 

And I suppose that's why it feels so good to open the windows and let out months of stale air. To totally abandon layers and let the girls run naked in the backyard. To notice the kiss of sunshine on lily white skin with a hint of romance...like a body going a very long time without the touch of a loved one. It feels like over night hope grew in the crocus and the tulips and the whole world is celebrating and my hair catches flower petals like confetti at a wedding. 

And hope does spring. Last week Dustan took the last of his chemo pills which marked the end of constant treatment since his July brain surgery. and this week feels a bit like spring. And in a way it feels like we earned it. Days of nausea, of patience running low. Of weight loss and sleepless nights, of frustrated demoralizing struggle against some unseen foe...of marking our lives by the swing of the effects that chemo brings and living under the weight of knowing there is more. 

But as I scheduled this month, I didn't mark the days he would be on chemo, and I guess I just hadn't realized how much we'd been living in our own winter until I felt the freedom of our spring. Unencumbered and hopeful that life begins again, that beauty comes from struggle.

There will be other seasons to come. Each with their own beauty and each with their own struggle. But today, for the first time in a long time I opened the cupboard by my stove where Dustan's mini pharmacy has rested and I put away our spare mugs on an empty shelf. And I smiled to myself...because sometimes it only takes a blooming branch or an empty cupboard to remember that...hope...does...spring.