Spring Fever

It's late and I'm tired, but I find I can't sleep without sharing some Spring with you. A deadly case of spring fever infected me today, and I sort of lost my mind. Because of the lateness of the spring, my sweet little violets are still in bloom so I took yet another photo to show you. And then I realized that the phrase "riotous color" must have been born when some flamboyant writer came upon spring azaleas for the first time.

Rodney and I took off this afternoon for an unexpected walk on the beach, and some magical combination of the change in seasons and the astronomical tide created a very low tide for the time of year, the lowest we've seen since last summer. The water was clear and there was a long, shallow lake on our side of a sand bar, created by the water trapped at the low tide. I found a couple of treasures, including a conch or whelk or whatever those things are, with a gorgeously slug-like creature at home. I took a picture and put it back in the water. And then (maybe a reward from on high?) I found a whole, living sand dollar. I haven't seen one of those outside a tourist shop since I was a kid. I really wanted to keep it, but Rodney pointed out that it was alive. Again, I took a picture and put it back in the extravagantly blue ocean. You can't see it in the photo; the light was shifting in the late afternoon and the shadows were tricky, but there is a very fine growth of fuzzy fauna on one side of the sand dollar. It looks like the fine short hair some babies have when they're born, the stuff that grieves you when it falls out. What a lovely thing it was to find. There was more - we found some very cool sharks' teeth and so on, but this was what I couldn't sleep without sharing.

Some folks I know are passing through a terrible trial right now; a great tragedy has been visited upon them. Without sharing the details, it's made me reflect long and hard about how fragile everything is. The delicate tissue that holds our lives together is so easy to think of as muscular and resilient. Perhaps in some ways, it is. But it can be so breakable, so brittle and almost impossible to put back together. Hold your babies tight, my loves. Love them all you can. Take them out into the spring sunshine and sit on a blanket as the air begins to warm. Say your prayers, wish your wishes, speak to your God or Goddess, guardian angel or higher power, and count your blessings. It is Spring, and the light has come again.