Bluebird on My Shoulder

In a feigned attempt at spring preparedness, I paint my first two toes a light pearlescent pink. As they peep-through my peep-toed shoes, I feel a major strut coming on. It’s spring! I can’t hide my joy about this. It’s f-ing wonderful. After a fall and winter of sadness and more days of sheer misery than I can count I can say, “f-ing wonderful” and mean it.

The latest husband and wife joke around the house is that we look so cute and happy it’s like living with another person. I flirt, “Hey there new husband” as Mike grimaces and announces he’s on the prowl for a new girlfriend, So There. Our mock fight is just another sign that spring, and love, is once again, blooming.

Runners emerge from their wintry cocoons. You can see the pride on their faces as they stretch their limbs like panthers after sleep, as if their personal body heat is warming the walkways. Dogs too, take part in the parade of fancy.

Spring was the first sign the school year was coming to a close, a boy would ask you to the prom, or like my date, ditch the prom and whisk me to the opera instead. It meant water fights on the bus, forgetting your homework, your troubles.

Spring strikes me as a hopeful time. A trusting time. A time when there is faith required that the sun will indeed shine and grow new things. Crocuses conquer frost and fall’s remnant dead leaves. They are small yet stalwart, laughing at the wind. My shouting is turning to laughter too. I’m reminded of Ecclesiastes, and you don’t have to be religious to love this poem, which even toking hippies adopted to express universal truths.

All things have their season, and in their times all things pass under heaven.

A time to be born and a time to die.

A time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.

A time to kill, and a time to heal.

A time to destroy, and a time to build.

A time to weep, and a time to laugh.

A time to mourn, and a time to dance.

A time to scatter stones, and a time to gather.

A time to embrace, and a time to be far from embraces.

A time to get, and a time to lose.

A time to keep, and a time to cast away.

A time to rend, and a time to sew.

A time to keep silence, and a time to speak.

A time of love, and a time of hatred.

A time of war and a time of peace.
...And I have known that there was no better thing than to rejoice, and to do well in this life.

Amen to that.