{"id":2635,"date":"2021-03-21T14:13:48","date_gmt":"2021-03-21T21:13:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/shrinkstaging.lorriegoldin.com\/?p=2635"},"modified":"2021-03-21T14:13:48","modified_gmt":"2021-03-21T21:13:48","slug":"first-day-of-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shrinkrapped.com\/?p=2635","title":{"rendered":"First Day of Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Yes, I know that officially yesterday was the first day of spring, but in my book, the cusp doesn\u2019t count. The real deal is March 21st<\/sup>, embedded in my brain and on my calendars since childhood. That childhood was spent in New England, where usually a blanket of snow lay unperturbed by the date on the page. I\u2019ve lived in the San Francisco Bay Area since 1977, where daffodils burst forth and the Japanese plums are festooned with a cloud of pink blossoms just in time for Valentine\u2019s Day. But the calendar defies lived experience. March 21 is the first day of spring, and that\u2019s that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

March 21, 2020, is also the wedding date of a couple unknown to me to whom I am eternally grateful. Without their long-planned nuptials, my daughter and her boyfriend would have moved from San Francisco to Brooklyn on the first of March. But they delayed their departure to witness a cousin\u2019s joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That short time span, of course, was when our world turned upside down. I think of my daughter and her boyfriend trying to find an apartment and navigating the subways, newly arrived in the pandemic\u2019s epicenter. Instead, they scrambled to see if they could rescind the notice they\u2019d given on their nearly packed apartment. (Yes, they could!) They started working remotely for the same tech companies whose New York branches had beckoned. They kept abreast of the cousin\u2019s rapidly shrinking wedding plans and slept unperturbed by constant sirens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My husband and I drew huge sighs of relief. They were safe, at least for now. Not the fate, sadly, of so many. We felt the shock and sorrow of the deepening horror along with our luck.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also felt lucky that it was spring when shelter-in-place began. The green hills, blossoms, and soft breezes would see us through until things got better\u2014around July, I figured in those early days. Surely by then universal masking, testing, contact tracing, and cooperation would have contained the virus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, things got worse, catastrophically so for tens of millions in this country alone. Groundhog Day, the 13th<\/sup> month of March, our long, dark winter, the apocalypse\u2014whatever we called this strange time warp of everything different while also the same, it seemed like it would last forever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then the vaccines came. It felt like deliverance, even though we were cautioned that not much could change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what changed immediately, though. Despite some lousy side effects those two jabs can cause, the most pronounced and immediate are the rush of joy and hope. Whereas last spring marked our entrance to Hell, this spring feels like we may truly soon emerge if we don\u2019t abandon our senses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To celebrate (fully masked and vaccinated), my friend Mary and I met at Filoli<\/a>, a gorgeous estate south of San Francisco known for its gardens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n