It's Spring???

 I woke up and needed to dance. It’s Spring! It’s Spring!

Before you say I’m crazy (which I am), enjoy a little context:

I am Not a winter person. Winter doldrums and I do Not get along.

In contrast, I love the Spring. I love watching the color creep back into the world and feeling the energy creep back into me. I love hearing the peepers and then the birds and feeling the world begin to teem with life. If I were an Anne of Green Gables character, I like to say my name of belonging would be “Emily of Springtime Song.”

So… back in my early teens, I had a friend who always exhorted me to cheer up. No, this was not toxic positivity— this was true concern about the melancholy that would sweep over me. She would draw me pictures of flowers at the start of winter to remind me to hope. I still have those cray-pas works of art.

So, one day when I was about 13, I decided to rewrite my view of the world. I figured that it would be wrong to reject a Whole season. After all, some people must love Winter and it would be wrong to deprive them of their joy. Christmas belongs in winter; how else could folks dream of a white one? I decided in my adolescent invincibility to cede December 21 through New Years to all the winter lovers.

January 2nd and onward, however, were mine. In my wild stubbornness, I proclaimed January 2nd the Emilian first day of Spring. The Equinox would henceforth be a celebration called “Spring Day.” I was adamant about this, and vocal.

Did my new nomenclature help with yet undiagnosed seasonal depression? Maybe it staved off my chemistry for a few weeks, but in truth, no. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet and winter by any other name would be as bitter.

That said, it etched Spring into the very core of my identity and helped me remember my optimism, resilience, and zaniness.

I had forgotten about this all until about three a.m. this morning. With my Very Lazy Vacation, I am more rested than ever, and I awoke with a start: It’s Spring! It’s Spring! And I just had to dance. (The song of choice, by the way, was Miriam’s Song by Debbie Friedman.)

You see, in remembering my old holiday, I remembered a part of myself that I had forgotten: the wild, reckless, joyful abandon.

I hope you have a happy “spring” and that you find pieces of your own joy that have been scattered in days gone by, left to find in late night moments of lucidity!