It’s Definitely Spring

(Although damn if it’s not taking its time about it! )

It’s still pretty chilly here in Southern Maine. We were traveling in Europe at the beginning of the month, and while I’m gathering my thoughts about it, I should point out that it’s much easier to write/post on le weekend in November-March, because, well, November-March.

Now that we’re home you’ll hear from me on Mondays because it’s a great way to start the week thoughtfully, and because I, like most of us will likely be outside as much as possible for the foreseeable.

This Trip Was Planned Seemingly A Lifetime Ago

Last fall, long before the inauguration, we decided we would visit my youngest for his 21st birthday, who is currently studying in Paris, then go to Vienna for a few days to gorge ourselves on art, and then return back to Normandy to walk in the footsteps of my great uncle Harry Gordon, who was my grandmother’s closest sibling and who died in Luxembourg at the Battle of the Bulge.

I of course have a lot more pictures and thoughts to share about everything we saw and experienced, but what caught my attention immediately were the visibly public ways that each country we visited-France, Austria, Luxembourg-reckons with their legacies of complicity in the NZ’s final solution. To experience this at the same time our own country is galvanizing to fight fascism was chilling. And even as the daughter of a Holocaust scholar, who is well educated in the horrors of the Third Reich, I saw everything with a terrible immediacy.

Each country struggles with accountability in different, too-limited ways, and each country is struggling with the sharp rise of right-wing propaganda like we are, but given our own country’s abject failure to even acknowledge its roots are based in slavery, I could only take mental notes. Many, many notes. Because they are doing a damn sight better job than we are.

Spring arrived fully during our visit, and evidently everything blooms there all at once, so I was continually shocked into the present by the kind of natural beauty that reminds us it is always in charge. That each season hurls itself forward into the next. That winter is never permanent even if it feels that way.

Heading home to our own, layered Spring (just daffodils and witch hazel so far!) I am so incredibly grateful for the chance to have two Springs this year, one for rest and one for protest, the former in which we filled up on art, music, and history, walked everywhere, ate delicious food, hugged my kid, and put the finishing touches on my hysterectomy recovery, so much that I feel strong enough for the next, in which we *cracks knuckles* tell hate:

HANDS OFF

Next week I’ll share what it was like to be an intuitive in places where the worst of humanity had their way for a while.