When Streams are Ripe and Swelled with Rain

I hate April Fools Day. I spend a lot of time actively avoiding looking foolish, and here is a day whose sole intention is to make me look like an idiot. No thanks. It’s not going to be pretty if someone puts a box of donuts in the workroom that actually contains carrots.

Lorelei has asked that I play a trick on her, so I guess I need to think of something.

You know. In my spare time.

On the other hand, it’s April! Spring and flowers and gardens and parties! Impromptu cookouts and weekend camping! I love April.

Mostly. There’s also the pollen. And the anniversaries.

My favorite months are April and May. These two months contain the best weather, the birth of both of my children, my birthday, and mother’s day.

The hardest months of my life were April and May.

It’s difficult to reconcile this in my head, so I am left spinning in circles of pain and joy.

The other day I saw someone in the grocery store who I really didn’t feel like talking to, so I spent the shopping trip peeking around corners before heading down an aisle. By the time I got to the checkout line I had a headache from straining my eyes to see with my peripheral vision.

I feel like that is an apt analogy for my general mindset these days. I love spring (the analogy falls apart a little there, since I don’t love the grocery store, but stay with me), but I am constantly peeking around corners waiting to run headfirst into a memory that sucker punches me. The person I was avoiding wasn’t going to sucker punch me. Honestly this is a shitty analogy.

What I’m trying to say is that the same things I love about spring are reminders of last year. Rowan turns one this month. This month. I cannot avoid these memories, and I don’t want to want to. They’re Rowan’s story. They’re my story. We can’t untangle it, so I’m going to have to learn to live with the knots.

I’m overwhelmed (big shock) with a confusing mixture of gratitude, elation, fear, and kinetic energy. Rowan is freaking amazing. His laugh is best described as a cackle. Except when he’s going for my boob, at which point I swear he gives this Beavis and Butthead frat boy laugh. He’s crawling all over the place, and keeps doing downward dog. He’s going to be pulling up soon. He loves food. He still uses me as a pacifier all night long. He got his first black eye the other day, and it barely phased him.

So here’s to spring. At least it’s not winter.