Coming Around to Spring

The spot on my eye is a comet, a small blur of particles speeding through space and time. We here on earth are careening around the sun at 70,000 miles per hour. I put down the science book I am reading aloud to Adele in order to grasp this crazy fact. It is unfathomable. Our hair should be blown off our heads, our heads ripped off our bodies, at the speed we are traveling. I call up the stairs to Steve: "Did you know this?!" I cry.

I had thought the earth was inching slowly around the sun, but no--we are flying. Even with the pull of gravity, is it any wonder we don't always feel grounded?

As the gray winter days wore on throughout March of this year, I struggled with a bout of obsessive thinking that is a recurrent problem for me. I wondered whether my anxiety, which seemed to have been borne of a small brown spot, might also be tied to my firstborn's formally beginning the college search process, and thus the process of leaving and change. The school year was at its most demanding, and it was hard to resist the feeling that life was all work and pressure, trials and tests. Each day was cold and rainy, and for a time it seemed nothing came easily.

Something needed to shift.

And it did. As the earth flew along its orbit, axis tilted, the light began to shift in the hemispheres. A boy threw pebbles at Colette's window, and when she went to the door, he presented her with a bunch of fresh yellow tulips and a blue plastic Easter egg with a note inside that read, "Prom?"

This unexpected gesture toward my daughter broke winter's spell at our house. My vision is clearing: This is why we are here, to create radiant sparks with and for one another as we fly along our orbital paths.

Yes, the future is always uncertain, but with the return of warm sunshine, I feel calmer. I needed spring to come, bringing its inherent hopefulness and promise. It came on its own as a result of our passage around the sun. We are on course, and I am enjoying the season's colorful blooms and participating in the new growth around me.