Playing for Time

It was fall just last month, with leaves covering the ground while our hemisphere said night-night ’til spring… and now spring is HERE, or will be in a couple of days. It’s been cold this week, but the grass is green and the trees are budding. My tall duck-blind here on the corner tells me the story every day, and the takeaway is that nothing is final except death, so where there’s life… hope exists.

I observed a moment of silence yesterday in honor of my Diary-of-The-Year-That-Was, after I made my final entry. She was a sweet muse, my diary friend, and she carried me through dark and light for 365 days without leaving me to my own ends. I missed her immediately, I miss her still… but endings are sometimes the next step in the process if you do it right. I had an imaginary friend around age four whose name was Agnes Opal and whose persona I absorbed, along with her delicious moniker, but she didn’t make it to 1st Grade with me. We were country kids without the privilege of kindergarten at our small school, so I managed to shed all vestiges of Agnes before I was found out by my peers, OMG. Endings… don’t argue when they stop you in your tracks – you may have escaped a fate worse than death and you’ll never even know. My uncles thought it was just damn cute when I said my name was Agnes Opal, but it wouldn’t have given me a great start on the playground, so yeah… endings. Once you figure out that LIFE CONSISTS OF CHANGE from womb to tomb, you own the formula for peace. But full disclosure, it’s tricky to apply.

Today’s our official immunity date after our COVID vaccinations, which will change very few things in our immediate world except for that breathe-a-little-easier feeling. We’ve done what we can, we dealt with a wonky health year in our household, and we’ll keep masking in public for as long as we need to. Douglas County’s new cases yesterday were ZERO, so there’s that hopey-changey thing again, always in the background.

I couldn’t be more ready for spring and the joy of walking onto the balcony barefoot and soaking up sunshine. It’s a good time to come out of the cave.