Spring is coming and I’m getting ready.  I’m setting up a seedling nursery in the kitchen.  Nothing too ambitious, just a couple of shelves and two lights.  Maybe I can coax some long tall snap dragons and dahlia surprises into sprouting.  This might be the last hellebores this season, though. My flower lady told me she can’t order any more. Trader Joe runs a a no-nonsense ship, apparently. You get what you get and you don’t get upset.

I’m having trouble remembering what to do with one normal day after another.  Like things used to be, only we didn’t know it. 

I know there are still zombies in the woods (looking at every Republican voter who thinks the election was stolen).  And somehow we are debating whether Vladimir Putin is an adversary.  A jar of mayonnaise costs more than the excellent house brand champagne Trader Joe sold at New Years. 

Still, we are as close as we may ever get to back in the day.

Except for how different we all are, of course.  Witnesses to a confluence of historic and personal tragedies, seen in their horrifying, particular detail.  The people who are gone forever, and the inner self who simply can’t be revived.  

No wonder normal feels like such a redemption.