Joy #6

 It's a slow spring this year...

 In Virginia, spring is often a "wham, bam, thank you, Ma'am" affair of two weeks' gorgeous weather in between blizzards and suffocating heat and humidity, but this year we've been gifted with a slow trickle of perfect days. It's almost as if Lady Spring understands what we've all been through in the last ten months, since she last left us. Perhaps she understands that our bruised selves would startle and shy away from her usual sudden glorious appearance and equally spectacular departure. We are all, like abused children, a little nervous of the sudden, the glorious, the spectacular. Afraid to trust, after long-deferred hope, the glimmer of a new horizon ahead.

So this year, Spring is dropping two, or maybe three, beautiful days into each week. Chilly nights, followed by clear, bright mornings-- like waking up inside a watercolor painting. We keep forgetting where we are in the year and leaving the windows open all night, waking up to a legitimate need for fuzzy bathrobes and slippers. By early afternoon, we're shedding sweatshirts and hauling t-shirts and tank tops out of drawers, and heading outside to soak up all sunshine we've been starving for this long, dark winter.

In deference to our precarious emotions, Spring seems to retreat every so often-- a night or two in the 30s and 40s threatening the dogwoods, the lilacs and the pears; giving us a moment to collect ourselves, to acclimate to the danger of hope. Or, perhaps gives us a foretaste now and then of what's to come-- an afternoon of blazing 80s and sunburn, firming up some weak resolve, stiffening up a spine here and there. She dances in and out, teasing gently, slowly lifting our bowed and weary hearts toward the summer, asking us to trust her promise of a coming end to our long ordeal.