Vernal equinox

Image from ayearandadaywicca.wordpress

“You know what Thursday is?” asked the cashier at the convenience store. “It’s the vernal equinox. You know what that means?”

I knew, but I wanted to hear her answer. So I said no.

“The first day of spring,” she chirped. “You know what that means?”

Again I said no.

“When we get up that morning,” she gushed, “all the snow will be gone. The sun will shine, the air will be warm, the grass will be green. The trees will be sprouting leaves, the flowers will bloom, and there will be robins. First day of spring.”

Instantly I was catapulted back to a March 20th fifty years ago. I was seven years old, riding in the car with my dad. “You know,” he said to me, “today is the first day of spring.”

I looked out the car window at the northern Minnesota landscape, the three-foot mounds of dirt-covered snow, the gray skies, the bare trees. I thought to myself: I don’t know if Dad knows what that word means.

“First day of spring,” the cashier rhapsodized. “You just wait and see.”

Happy vernal equinox, everybody. No matter what it looks like outside.