Yesterday I spent some time posting all of Marietta College's home baseball games on my calendar, an activity that fills me with hope and joy even though I know I won't make it to many actual games.
Baseball means spring, means sitting in the bleachers on a warm spring day (or a cold spring day, or a snowy spring day, or a spring day so windy that everyone has to literally hold on to their hats), means hot dogs and popcorn and temporarily banishing work from my mind. Sometimes it means triumph, but frankly, it doesn't even matter whether our team is doing well--when they're on the field, I want to be there.
This morning the gray clouds are spitting hard pellets of snow, but on Tuesday I saw snowdrops blooming on campus and daffodil buds swelling. Harsh winds sent my car sliding over ice this morning, but soon I'll meet with a former colleague inside a cozy coffee shop to talk about writing and look over delightful drafts. All my students will be turning in writing on Friday that I'll need to read and evaluate so I can post midterm grades, but Spring Break starts on Saturday and I'll be free for a week.
Well, relatively free. More free than usual. Free-ish. Not quite free as a bird--and did I mention that yesterday after the Ash Wednesday service I took a little detour to see if any great blue herons are staking out nests at the nearby rookery? With the ashy sign of penitence on my forehead, I struggled to keep the car on the road in sharp wind under an angry gray sky, but when I saw a lone heron standing tall and serenely on a nest atop a tree that was being battered by the wind, my smile was wide enough to break through all the darkness. It's been a rough winter but spring is on the way and I, for one, am ready to applaud its arrival.
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