In Cambridge now, we’re teetering at the peak of daffodils and cherry blossoms. But the colors started with the crocuses, with layer on layer of new faces emerging since then. Was this the beginning of spring, over a month before the equinox? Less tidy than the succession of flowers, many species of wind and cloud and sun flow through these early months, hybridizing winter and spring. But petals and their colors and birds with their eloquence won’t be ignored as they talk of the changing seasons. I’ve been taking notes.
Almost exactly a year ago, the world as we know it fell to pieces. I was in a cozy flat on a lane just off of Parker’s Piece, gathering with my church friends for what turned out to be the last time under normal circumstances, when the global response to the looming pandemic began to accelerate at whiplash speed. Earlier that morning President Trump had announced the closure of the US border to Europe and my sister had been called home from her internship in Spain. I was still imagining a modified version of the life I was used to: staying in Cambridge, probably working from home for a little while, still going to church on Sundays, gathering in some form in this small flat every week with our young adult church group. But when I got there on March 12, I learned that the older missionary couple who had just arrived a few days earlier to fill the role of young adult support in the congregation, living in the church-rented flat and hosting our gatherings, had been called home. They had 24 hours to pack and fly out. Later that night, all church gatherings were cancelled for the foreseeable future. So we ate our last weekly dinner and Jenny played the banjo and we said goodbye to our friends, bracing ourselves for the changed world.
