Risen From the Dead

It is a glorious pre-spring morning in Alaska. The sun is blinding streams through the picture window and the one bare foot in the light is warm, while the one in the shadow is freezing, which perfectly summarizes this in-between time of year. There is still a foot of (old) snow on the ground, but peeking up already are hints of green, the birch trees are budding, the squirrels are back and so are those little white and black birds (starlings?). Yesterday I bought a spring dress and drove with the sunroof open through the slushy streets, sliding around shadowed corners where the sun has yet to melt the ice. It's a time of contradictions.

I have this fear that on April Fool's Day, tomorrow, it will snow again and this early spring tease will be that much further set back. It's still noticeable to me after living here for two and a half years how precisely my mood is tied to the weather, or something about not noticing the light until it's gone. For half a year.

I'm reawakening from a hibernation that I didn't even realize I was in for the last few months. I went into the beginning of winter with a heartache, a loss, and my body sick from it took months to recover in the dark and cold. The light comes back and with it, hope and energy, and with hope and energy come relief, relief that things reverse. How could I forget that they do when I'm always weighing dichotomies? I remember now.