We’ve had a row of sunny, unseasonably warm days that have melted away the snow. I am telling myself that it is way too early to believe in spring. The snow may yet return. I am checking the brownish carpet of last year’s unraked leaves, half-hoping half-afraid to see the purple heads of crocuses peeping through. Too late for caution. My body is already rejoicing. The willow on my street is also rejoicing. She is sprouting those soft fluffy buds. Where I come from, we call them kittens. Where I come from, we cut some willow branches and bring them to church on Palm Sunday to be blessed. We bring just about anything to be blessed in church, especially food for big holidays. I used to think about these traditions: how very backwards. Now I think: how very animistic.

I have learned so much over the past several months. I have learned not to get in the way of my body. To let it grieve or rejoice over the smallest things. To not question the wisdom of the smallest things. To remember my ancestors in everything. My grandmother Vira in her last years used to say she wanted to live until spring. That was the life goal – to live long enough to see the spring. I think it’s a good one. In her last years, my grandmother was lost in the labyrinths of dementia. She forgot the calendar and the people around her and the events of her own life, but she never forgot the seasons and the names of her children. The last time I saw her, I was preparing to leave for another country for a long time. I always thought it was more important to leave, than to stay. Always believed that something good was waiting for me out there. The last time I saw her, my grandmother emerged from the depths of her dementia, just for a brief moment, in a beautiful fluid motion. She looked at me with her eyes now almost devoid of colour and said: “Take care of yourself out there, baby.” I cried and I knew I would not see her again.

She died in the winter of the year that I’d left and I didn’t come back to say good-bye. This is one of the many many many things I would have done differently.