Spring is more than something in your step

Lately I've been feeling "fine," uttered through clenched teeth with my eyes a bit watery and my pants fitting too tightly for comfort.  I convinced myself that the depression I fell into when Max and Alex were two was largely circumstantial (and there were mighty big circumstances:  the sudden death of my father, an ectopic pregnancy that required emergency surgery after a month of blinding pain and a winter in an apartment with two needy, well, two-year-olds).  Yeah, it sucked.  

Now this winter, I have one needy just-two-year old and two, still needy in a different way eight-year olds. And the wounds from the other stuff have healed, though still left scars.   This winter, I never felt black, but I was feeling a little blue.  

 Anyway, I write this bleak post because today, I felt so good. You know how that goes, when you feel better, you realize that you did feel badly.  I let Jack plan our day a bit.  We started by stopping at Starbucks with my husband, who skipped his usual train to have a tea with us.  Then to our beloved library, where Jack fetched story after story for me to read to him (sometimes jumping off my lap before we finished to get the next one).  We then walked through the melting snow over to get some bagels. We sat in the window seat of the bagel store and he marveled at the trucks and waved to several of our friends in passing cars and pointed at the dogs.  As we walked back to the car, he wanted to look at the creek that runs behind the library.  Today, I slowed down and let him.  He threw handfuls of snow into the creek and laughed.  I could be with him.  Not so tied to a schedule.  Just present.

I spotted daffodil shoots outside of the bookstore (my first of the season) and noticed some buds on our forsythia.  The wind stopped raging today.  For a moment I got a little giddy just imagining the explosion of nature around the corner. For the first time today,  I could smell spring.  Deep breath.