This Time of Year Part 1

There is a song by Better Than Ezra called “This Time of Year” whose lyrics speak to such prototypical things like football in the yard and that girl you stole. These poignant Hollywood-esque moments seem more Friday Night Lights than a pop-rock band from Louisiana. I know much of what they sing about relates to fall, but “there is a feeling in the air” that does in fact come this time of year that the song encapsulates perfectly with it wistful tone, including an aching sense of what could have been springing from the deep rooted desire so many seem to have to recapture the past as though it were a lightning bug that can be kept in a mason jar on the nightstand.

This time of year is certainly like that for me, has been for many years, but this year I feel engulfed in a perpetual state of excited nostalgia, perched on the end of a bold new adventure, yet clinging desperately to my current safe surroundings all while looking through my album of my life thus far and desperately wondering what the paths I did not follow would have led to…

This time of year is one of renewal; the Catholic rites of Easter pound that one into you with a yardstick wielded expertly by Sister Mary Cracksaknuckle. The whole earth metamorphosis from barren winter landscape emerges from its chrysalis with splendor, nature painted before us in a vivid brush that the human eye can only truly only appreciate if it looks at it with the human heart. Little things like forgotten flip-flops become a priceless treasure, a glass of wine on the wide porch with friends from the neighborhood parading past become a reunion of like souls. Spring is certainly about rebirth and new beginnings. But each of these glorious new beginnings is wrapped in the shroud of an ending, inexplicably woven into the circle of life, leaving a bittersweet taste on your tongue stinging with both joy and sadness…