a prelude for may

 Ah, May. This is the month where winter is finally just a memory and everything is green and alive again, finally--it's a shame it comes so close to the start of summer, that so often you can still feel the touch of winter in March and April and then by the time May rolls around it's almost over. Perhaps that's the nature of spring, though, to be ephemeral; perhaps if it really lasted it would cease to be spring, and I would instead be saying this about April or March. What is summer but spring once the novelty has worn off That's cynical, of course. But spring is new life, and summer is life ongoing, life unchanging.

We stand at a precarious point where something like an end to the pandemic seems to be in sight. The population of vaccinated individuals is increasing, and there's a promise of returning to normal, at least here. It's hard to trust it. There are disastrous spikes elsewhere, in places like India; there are large segments of the US population who still don't believe this is real; there is so much we don't know. But part of me wonders if I'm having a hard time trusting it because it's just been so damn long, it's hard to imagine normal happening again.

I was able to get my first shot recently and the second one is imminent. (The shot itself was painless, but by the evening my arm was very sore. I felt vaguely unwell the following day but if I hadn't gotten a shot the day before I'd have just assumed I was tired.) I am constantly told that the second shot makes you feel quite badly indeed the next day, and that's . . . odd. Being able to just write on your calendar that you're going to be unwell that day is odd. But there is a sense of relief, that at least for a while it will be safe to just be a person again.

These days it's hard for me not to think of what I was doing a year ago, since I started making the effort to chronicle life in a pandemic. Everything seemed so different back then. In some ways I almost miss it: at least a year ago, the city felt like it was taking it seriously. Now, it's this ghoulish half-life of people pretending things are normal and going through the motions of precautions, but . . . we're all so tired. And even if everything goes perfectly with the vaccines, we still have to clean up.

I hope spring is going well for you, wherever you are.