Breakup
Spring is supposed to be a renewal, an awakening of life. But in Alaska, they call it breakup.
I think they might be on to something because it’s the time when everything changes. In our new home, I’ve relied on the weather being cold enough for two jackets and all the head coverings.
But in the last few days, there’s a bit of a variable when it comes to clothes. I wasn’t a fan of the x’s and y’s in high school algebra and I don’t care for them now either. I liked knowing that I’d get a faceful of cold air when I stepped outside. It made me feel like I had fulfilled my daily quotient of doing something hard. That turning my face to the cold and existing in the chilled wind made me somehow more worthy. This is patently false, but I looked towards warmer days with a bit of apprehension because the temperature wouldn’t be low enough to prop up my self-esteem.
“Change, whether for good or for bad, is a breakup with what came before.”
In spring, apparently we are breaking up with who we were during winter. We’re breaking up with the dark parts of ourselves when the sun slipped away at 4:30 in the afternoon. The snow is disintegrating alongside, with all the piles on rock ledges and rooftops disappearing by the hour. Of all ironies, when the smooth, pure, snow leaves it creates the muckiest, dirtiest, brownest mess in its wake. It fattens each grain of soil and saturates the world with and earthy smell that isn’t good kind. As if all the bad things are waking up and coming to the surface along with the good ones.
Spring is breaking up with its frozen ancestor. When I can see the earth’s brown grass and pockmarked mud, it means that the time when things were white and soft and minimal and easy to look at are gone. There’s more to consider when life is abundant: more to think about and notice and take care of.
Is this the season equivalent of rose colored glasses? Is winter like an infancy and spring is the awakening but it’s the kind that arrived uninvited? How clean is this break with my earlier self going to be?
I suppose in the end, that breakup may not be a bad thing. It may be what leads to flowers and sunshine and dry trails. It may be the launchpad to a moment where I can close my eyes and shiver with the sun’s warmth on my shoulders.
But first, I have to say goodbye to what came before.
Inspired by events in Baranof Island, Alaska
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