Second Spring

I've been through three seasons this week. It snowed the day I arrived, as though the blue-black clouds had forgotten it was May and past time to go. Then it rained, like it does in early Spring, when the smell of wet soil settles deep into your lungs, spongy and filled with life. And today the sun burst into flame. The smell of hot pavement rose heavy from the streets below where I sat, on the sticky black roof of this yellow-bricked home I am learning quickly to love.

One week. Three seasons. 2807 miles. I landed here almost by accident, driven by an inescapable desire for new sights and sounds, a need to run to something, not just away. And I believe I've found it. In a small kitchen. With my hands deep into 40 cups of chopped vegetables, face smeared by flour, drenched in rinse water, with aching feet, and mind full of ideals that I am living out. Ideals of community and connection. Ideals of shared space and unexpected capabilities. And these are driven by the simple vehicle of making food, of conversations and laughter. It is that easy. It is that hard.

And it doesn't mean that I've made a clean escape. Those three words you handed to me like a fake fruit, perfect and empty, have left their mark even across this distance. I won't pretend I passed blithely over your arms as they held someone new. I know their shape too well for that. But I am changing seasons. Again. And my sun-warmed heart is too full to hold onto these stings.

The cherry blossoms that are long gone in Victoria are just out here. It is my second spring of the year, a re-gifting of time I thought already gone for good.
Welcome, summer of inspiration, summer of astounding joy.

- M