Our Oldest Friend

a devotional for spring

Photo by Adeolu Eletu on Unsplash

I slough off my coat
on the same morning
the trees begin to grow back their leaves, 

and all of us stand
in bare arms before the spring sun
stretching
reaching
for a warmth we haven't felt in months;

last frost still weeks away, 
and yet this blue sky is a prophecy
of summer. 

our pulse quickens
under sun-starved 
bare-bark
goosepimpled
skin

like the sap
rising
from heavy root 
to quivering crown. 

This weekend, our area had the first taste of luscious springtime warmth, a tease of what’s to come. The temperatures climbed to just under 70 degrees Fahrenheit, the sky was cloudless and blue, the sun was warm enough to sit on the patio in short sleeves (though an errant breeze or a dash of shade would make you quickly reach for your sweater again).

My husband and I found ourselves laughing good-naturedly at how predictable it is when people in our region feel that first dash of warmth. All of the neighbors—wintertime hermits in our houses, hardly seeing each other’s faces in the cold and wet—were suddenly out in their yards, waving hello, catching up on the news. All of the birds lost their minds tumbling through the bushes looking for the newly-hatched bugs and grubs. The mosquitos were out, hungry. The ants were foraging. The snakes and lizards were basking. You could hear the first siren-songs of lawnmowers and hedge-trimmers and weed-whackers echoing through the neighborhood. I even dug my flip-flops out of the closet, a premature ritual.

And it makes sense. You could feel it in the air, something resonant.

It’s one of the few threads that still connects us to the primal, the ancestral, that resonant feeling: a relief that we made it through another winter. And even though our modern world doesn’t usually worry about such things, because we don’t need to make our pantries last until the next harvest and we don’t worry about the wolf sniffing at the door, that animal panic still lives in us, curled up and quiet.

Until the sun returns. When the sun returns, we celebrate.

When spring comes, when winter finally releases her grip and sinks down into the earth to wait for her time again, there’s something deep within us that feels our Oldest Friend has come back to us. The sun, our fiery fellow. True, in the middle of a heatwave summer we may start to yearn for the cool and the rain again, but for now? For now, the wheel has spun us toward green and blue and gold and growth, and we are glad.

Sunshine, old friend. Though there may yet be a frost or two before your reign truly begins, we salute you. Welcome, and welcome, and welcome.

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