Spring is so many things to me.

Today, it’s the pull of thick black mud, rich with possibility and riven with seeds, but difficult to get through. It’s a felt-gray sky sliced through with chilly raindrops, pelting your scalp, your hat, the back of your neck. It’s a cold breeze from some unseen high country, carrying a voice which counsels you to stay indoors, to cultivate your patience just a little longer, to light one more fire at the hearth to keep the cool at bay.

It’s not the ideal spring equinox, is what I’m saying here; but it is my forty-seventh, and expecting each one of those to be beauties is simply silly. Particularly in northwestern Illinois. Yes, I’d prefer to plant my butt on the warm and ripening earth and dig bare toes into fresh green grass, to wait for the chill to flow up my spine and welcome me inside come evening with a mug of warmed wine; but I’ll make the day lovely with some braised greens in place of the grass and a hearty frittata in place of the sun.

As if to call it further, I saw a neighbor this morning on my drive – not a rabbit, symbol of the season, but a raccoon, ungainly and waddling, bright of eye and sharp of tooth, held to the hours of darkness rather than day. I don’t mind it. Little clever thieves have always had pieces of my heart, and I was glad there was so little traffic in the hours of my driving to threaten his own little peace.