Turning of the Year

Spring in Dixie

The very best thing about living in the deep South is that Spring comes early and in earnest. Our winters are typically tepid, and then, suddenly, it's Spring. We wring every thing we possibly can out of this season simply because it is a precursor, and the sweetest inhalation before a hellishly hot summer.

In winter, there are days when we can sit on our screen porches and sip iced tea. While everyone else is shoveling snow, or stacking sandbags, we're planting pansies and praising the sun. And then comes Spring, when everything turns pink and white, the jasmine blooms along back walls, and the dogwoods unfurl their tender crosses just in time for Easter.

Such beauty is almost enough to make all the idiotic politics, and just plain mean-spirited racism, bearable for half a second. When our mayor and a City Councilman punch one another in the face downtown, we can turn our eyes to the red-buds for inspiration. 

When our governor, in all his wisdom, decides to build three new high-rise prisons instead of reforming the sentencing laws, or providing money for drug rehabilitation and mental health programs, we can wind the bridal wreath spirea into halos and call ourselves free. When the Chief Justice of our Supreme Court announces that this state doesn't have to abide by the decisions of our nation's Supreme Court because...well, because we're special...we can pick a bearded iris for our hair.

Spring does not make any of this right, or just, or compassionate, but it somehow shows us that there is a Higher Power who's not bound by human ignorance and fear, but is, instead, full of color and delight, and that life abounds in spite of the backward tug of Southern politics.