It’s been a winter. Two feet of snow, times two. Minus five feels-like temps. Broken pipes, Antarctica-style sidewalks, blizzard warnings, entire rivers freezing. It was giving End of Times, Revelations, the Great Freeze.
And that’s just the physical winter. Let’s not get into the metaphorical one. There are too many layers. I mean, are they still called metaphors when they have the same names — like how much ice, no cap and all cap, can one endure? It’s a hard pass for me bro. Opt out.
But the news alerts keep coming, no matter how many times you unsubscribe. The anchor keeps reading the teleprompter even after you turn the TV off (turn the TV off). Tragedy breaks into the living room no matter how tightly you dead bolt the door. So we turn to the shelf and the page and the ancestors.
Sister Lucille Clifton, who survived winter after winter as a kid in Buffalo, then winter after winter as an adult in Baltimore: Mama Clifton passing at 44 from epilepsy and Husband Clifton dying at 49 from cancer and Lucille Clifton’s own nearly two-decades-long battle with cancer from age 58.
“Come celebrate with me,” she wrote, “that everyday something has tried to kill me, and has failed.”
Winter has been real. Most small businesses like ours know this realness. Each of us in our own lives knows this realness. But today is the first day of spring. Equinox — equal night.
Let us pray we return to balance. Let us pray the metaphors evolve with the season. That life follows the way of the sun. The way of the crops. The way of the golden rod and aster and cherry blossoms and all those buried oak acorns.
Break ground. Return to yourself. Come celebrate with me.
Benje