First Crocus ~ Last Snow ~ New Roof: resisting oppressors is how we roll

photo by Valentin Hintikka @ UnSplash

On the 7^th of April and, despite a half inch of late snow thats stuck and no sun to melt it off, there is a roofing crew on the top of my house scraping off old shingles and setting new ones. Its a one-day roof job, they'll be done in a few hours. I'm amazed at how swiftly they can come and go, and clean it all up too. The crew is not english speaking, I'm grateful for their labor and more grateful they can work on a dirt road in the woods that ICE won't be patrolling today. Times are strange.

This week I sat at a Seder set outside on the deck where a child brought the first handful of daffodils for us to savor, flowers for the table. On the ritual plate we placed the expected offerings, an egg and roasted bone, charoset and bitter herbs, an orange for women and this year a pomegranate for Palestine. I meant to bring a whistle for the plate to represent our resistance and since I forgot it we all pursed our lips for a blow and loosed some levity to the wind. Because, millennia upon millennia, resisting oppressors is how we roll. Freedom rises.

At work this morning I text with a daughter traveling with her children to retrieve her mother's cremated remains. I text with a son whose father has cancer with an ending coming into sight. I text with an old woman whose resolving pneumonia has compounded her urgency to complete advance directives. Later, on the way to deliver a shroud, I'll pass the roadside altar placed where a friend died and find myself asking her ghost (again) what she wants me to say when I convene her celebration of life a month or so from now. And all of this, every sacred step of it, is couched in the excruciating awareness that my own mother, at 95, is walking with steady courage through her own end-of-days.

Like I said, times are strange.

Yesterday I glimpsed the first crocus as I dashed to the car. First to bloom (along with the snow drops) they're tucked in under the witch hazel, which is the last thing in the yard that blooms in autumn. This morning the blossoms are closed tight, hiding from the weather. Tomorrow, when the sun's rays glance off the new shingles on the roof, they will open to meet all the new day brings. From here, the future looks like a shit show that is unlikely to resolve in my lifetime. But I take heart because even when we have to bloom in the snow, as history teaches us millennia upon millennia, freedom rises.