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A deep breath this morning as I sit down. Salted coffee, and blackbirds outside the window. I didn’t write yesterday, but spent a full day with a new printer: learning to adjust for paper weights, manual feed, and double-sided pages. A lot of trial and error. Small steps forward. Or sideways.

No: I am moving forward again.

I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I got my first pair of glasses. But I remember looking at a tree and realizing that you are supposed to see the individual leaves on trees. My eyesight had deteriorated so gradually I hadn’t noticed what I had lost of the world.

This week I feel like I can see the leaves on the trees. It’s not that life is less crowded, but it is more vibrant. Distinguishing the foreground from the background, wresting meaning from it all is easier.

There is a saying that things having gradually then all at once. But these past years, things happened all at once, and then so gradually that I thought changes were improvements, or at least adjustments. I didn’t see the signs of depression because the everyday problems were so tiny compared to the crisis that began it all. How could I be having trouble getting through the day when the worst was over a long time ago?

My world is popping back into three dimensions. Other people seem more substantial. I realize how odd that sounds. I don’t mean that in comparison with how I perceived myself, I have been insubstantial, too. That is what depression does. In my case the desperate search for meaning and pleasure can look like business, like creativity or a “spark” of joy. But the spark is just me bumping against the metallic edge of panic. Wheels spinning, and life is just so much harder than it needs to be. Pinched.

When the doctor asked me if I was depressed, I said I didn’t think so. I said I was overwhelmed, hypomanic. But now I see.

Now I feel like crying. And that is a very good thing.

Last night walking Leonard in the dark, I heard the wheeeEEE of the pterodactyls lapwings. They are back, so it is officially spring. Officially a time to mark new beginnings.

under the streetlight
wet paw prints, footsteps glisten
temporarily
like loved ones gone by morning
after a crossing over

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This morning I look in the mirror and see the swollen half-moons under each eye. I’m still dealing with insomnia. I grab a coffee mug and open the sliding door to let Leonard out into the yard. The snow is coming in nearly perpendicular to the earth, and half-melting the moment it touches anything. The table outside is covered with a gray slush and hailstones. Leonard comes in again, wet and miserable, heading straight for the treat cupboard.

I’m on a second cup of coffee before I even sit down to write.

My morning routine has sort of toppled on its head. Yoga and meditation when and if I force myself. But I know all things circle back and am trying to be patient with myself. No whipping. May you be happy. May you be healthy. May you live with ease.

I’ve cleared my calendar again, to settle down with mint tea and a book of poems. This afternoon: Camille T. Dungy’s Trophic Cascade. I am having a difficult time giving in to relaxation. But I would be lying if I tried to convince anyone that the guilt I have means I am actually getting anything done. Housework. Yard work. I honestly don’t know how the hours are leaving my presence so empty.

I lay on the shakti mat and listen to a podcast. I eat. I long to go running. Or rather, I long to want to go running again. Patience.

Leonard nudges my arm so I will lift it out of his way, and he lays his head on my chest and stares at me. I have no idea what is going on in his head when he does this. Sometimes he will lift his head and, very tenderly, bite the tip of my nose. Honestly, it’s as uncomfortably intimate as it is amusing.

The clocks spring forward in a little over a week. Which means that the mornings will be dark again. I am already mentally preparing. After that, Easter, and then headlong towards summer. It’s only this year that I am conscious of the ambivalence I feel when I become aware of myself wanting summer to come soon. In wanting the days to fly by. I have no idea if I am late to this understanding? Late to understanding the value in savoring all of the days? Sometimes I catch myself counting backwards. From 95 on a good day. From 100 on days when my respect for science totters on the edge of faith. Then I remind myself that there is no guarantee and that to put off really paying attention to the days until I am retired may not be the wisest of plans. What are those seven regrets again? And why on earth am I thinking of them now?

You know. I don’t think I’m going to regret not doing the dishes right now.

I’ve got a book of poems and an overgrown puppy.

the cold winds squeezing
between the sash and the sill
intermittent taps
reminding you of the world
beyond the quilt and the tea

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Another night of insomnia, but I am holding onto the knowledge that this phase will pass soon. That I will be able to sleep again. Meanwhile, the finches and tits are singing in the garden, and the sky is already beginning to blue when I let Leonard out to drink from the bird bath.

Obviously, that isn’t what he is supposed to be doing.

But this is what spring is for – wriggling loose from the constraints of winter. Bending the rules. I cross the driveway to check the mail in my socks. No need to pull on a coat or brace myself against a wind. I know there will be more snow before summer takes hold, but it is nice to tilt my face to the sun and take a deep breath and allow myself a bit of lightness while I still feel slightly off-kilter.

I have a cotton-filled skull from this lack of sleep. Everything feels like walking on moss. Soft, but the world is too giving. No way to get traction. No oomph.

I drink coffee until noon – then mint tea. And my stomach growls all day. I’m afraid my life has become a catalog of minutiae.

And a to-do list with unchecked items. A calendar that is an accusation.

But I have a plan for the evening before the sun goes down. I’m going to take a little delight safari in the neighborhood. Maybe figure out what Leonard is fascinated by deep in the neighbor’s thuja tree.

Maybe there’s something in there to grab a hold of. A hook to lift me into tomorrow, and the weekend, and these days now stretching ahead pale and shapeless. I know it’s all a mirage, though. I know that if one pays attention, the days are always much more interesting than you thought they’d be from a distance. Never what you expected, hoped for, but interesting nonetheless.

Textured. Colorful. Sonorous.

Shhh. Listen.

Shhh. But right now? I’m going to take a nap.

First the primroses
backing up, into the world
almost embarrassed
by their enthusiasm –
only then, the daffodils

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A cup of coffee and a clementine.

In the 19th Century, fresh fruit was known to be a treatment for melancholy. I think this explains my odd habit of sniffing citrus rinds. I press them to my nose and inhale deeply. Over and over. Sometimes I forget myself and do it in public.

In the teacher’s lounge at school, for example.

I also salt my coffee. No one has ever remarked on either. I am convinced we are only seen when we are unconcerned with being seen. And I wish that I meant that in the sense that we don’t care if we’re seen — but, no. When we forget to care. When we are vulnerably ourselves. I think then our behavior is so strangely familiar, (and thus) so painfully perplexing at no one dares to inquire: what’s up with you? Because they know there’s a real answer there that no one is prepared to hear.

Nok med sitt. (Their own shit to deal with.) And that’s okay. Sometimes we can find comfort in parallel play.

It’s the last day of February.

The sky still glows now past seven in the evening. A few impatient primroses are up, and there are bird calls I haven’t heard since fall. We sputter towards the summer. A day of snow, a day of hail, a day of blue-blue sky, and a south-westerly wind. Snow again. E. is pulling up the cobblestones in the drive, filling in the hollows with sand, and laying them again. Between the weather systems.

Walking Leonard I have an eye out for the lapwing’s return. I listen for the squeeze-toy call. I thought I heard it last night, but E. said I was mistaken. Anticipation, uncertainty. And the funny thing is, I have no idea why it matters to me. I grip onto this though — the lapwing — like gripping onto a handrail to hoist myself up the next step when I am too tired to just let my body move of its own will. Somewhere in me outside of logic, it means something.

About all I know of the lapwing is that it nests in the fields and is vulnerable to the tractors that drive through them.

If winter’s darkness is difficult, spring’s prodding and unpredictability are a trial to endure. Nothing returning from the dead comes back easily. The rearranging of matter causes morning sickness.

Persephone comes
& spring, her colicky infant
cannot fix his gaze
on the world – sleeps & shudders
– no idea what lies in store