Spring Fever

I am having a lot of trouble living in the present.  We’re waiting for Samuel to get accepted somewhere so that we can plan when and where to move (hopefully within the next 2-3 months) and then we have to use up all of our savings to do that and so we need jobs and we need insurance when we arrive and I can’t plan any of it because we don’t even know where we’re going yet.  I have all of these things to look forward to/worry about and really I can’t see why me sitting on this yellow loveseat with nothing to do right now is worth experiencing more than even just thinking about all the stuff we will do in the next several months.

I keep feeling like I should enjoy this time right now, my last semester at college, my last months in Utah, and not spend all my thoughts on future happenings or I will regret it.  But it is so. hard. because I feel like today pales in comparison to the future.  And there are so many Important Things coming up for me to prepare myself for and plan for (insurance, moving, jobs, new city, and so on) and it’s driving me crazy that I can’t do it yet!

The warm weather and longer days are not helping, either!  Spring always makes me so restless.  Like Huck Finn said:

“The frost was working out of the ground, and out of the air, too, and it was getting closer and closer onto barefoot time every day….  It just makes a boy homesick to look ahead like that and see how far off summer is. Yes, and it sets him to sighing and saddening around, and there’s something the matter
with him, he don’t know what. But anyway, he gets out by himself and
mopes and thinks; and mostly he hunts for a lonesome place high up on the
hill in the edge of the woods, and sets there and looks away off on the
big Mississippi down there a-reaching miles and miles around the points
where the timber looks smoky and dim it’s so far off and still, and
everything’s so solemn it seems like everybody you’ve loved is dead and
gone, and you ‘most wish you was dead and gone too, and done with it all.

“Don’t you know what that is? It’s spring fever. That is what the name of
it is. And when you’ve got it, you want–oh, you don’t quite know what
it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it
so! It seems to you that mainly what you want is to get away; get away
from the same old tedious things you’re so used to seeing and so tired
of, and see something new.”

I remember the first time I read that, I was very young, and I knew in my experience that it was TRUE, TRUE, TRUE.  I’ve always gotten spring fever around this time of year.  For as long as I can remember I’ve been an advocate of going barefoot.  As kids my friend Marjorie and I would try our best to toughen our feet so we could walk barefoot anywhere.  My feet need to breathe.  Sometimes these days I forego the slippers and walk around the house barefoot, and that makes me feel so light and happy, after having my feet bundled up all winter.  The transition from boots to sandals is so wonderful.  From wool coat to none.  Skin touching cloth to skin touching air.  From potatoes and meat to fruits and veggies.  From grey to green.

Springtime means newness, freshness, excitement, freedom.  I’m looking forward to having the sun and the wind in my life more often, and I can’t help it!