It's hard to believe it's been a year since last March, when the pandemic began. What a surreal year that was, to top off a surreal set of years before that. Even more surreal is just how normal it's all become: the masks, the "haha we're alive in a hell-time and there's nothing we can do about it", everything. Can you imagine how strange it would have been a year ago to see someone walking down the street wearing a mask on their chin? Now it's just a thing that happens.
So, March. Spring is trying its best to happen, after one astonishingly snowy day in February followed by a week of rain and warm weather to melt it all off immediately. But the temperatures are creeping upwards slowly, the days are getting longer--can you believe the Spring equinox is so close?--and the sun is shining a little more. Sometimes going outside in my usual winter gear feels too warm.
It's oddly appropriate, isn't it? Such a sad, fitful spring as the end of our pandemic is in sight but just out of reach? Perhaps we will get the bright riot of colors that made me fall in love with the springtime in Seattle, but not just yet. Old man winter isn't giving up that easily; it seems he's saved most of his fight for the end.
