Persephone Dreams...

The minute the icicles started to melt (remember the snow from just last week?), my youngest wanted to know if it was spring. Ah, Spring. I talked about the old calendar, which marks Imbolc, coming up on our Groundhog's Day, which "used to" mark the first day of spring. I talked about the equinox, which marks our calendar's first day of spring. And all the while she is looking at Now: the blue in the sky...the familiar friends plantain and chickweed already littering the ground...the truly new, young green of the moss...and turns to Eliza. Who tells her that maybe what is happening is that Persephone, bound to remain underground with Hades for six months before returning to join her mother Demeter and bring spring to the earth, maybe she is right now thinking about returning to see the colors of spring, so dear to her heart. And when she dreams those dreams, we get a glimpse of what we are longing for...

(we christened this vine The Umbilical Cord)

This walk was a saving grace; we finished choir on Monday and jumped in the car to drive the hour and a half to get Dan from the airport and E happened to have left an important something on the couch at home and I remembered some chocolate goodies our neighbor brought us earlier in the day, sitting on the kitchen counter...next to the phone....huh, I guess it's late enough in the day that Dan could have left me a message from the airport in Iowa...whew. Good thing I checked - he was socked in with fog. So I grabbed the chocolate and some water bottles and sweetened the disappointment with declaring it a hiking day! And Persephone dreamt us up a good one...