Happy Meteorological Spring!

In case you missed it, March 1 was the first day of meteorological spring, which is not to be confused with astronomical spring, which starts on the vernal equinox, which this year will fall on March 19 at 11:06 p.m. EDT. (How impressed are you with my ability to find semi-useless facts online?)

I like the notion of meteorological seasons. Unlike astronomical seasons—the ones where the first and last day shift every year—the meteorological seasons are regular and predictable. Forget the first robin or the first daffodil. I don’t need research to discover when meteorological spring will begin, because March 1 is March 1, and that’s all I need to know.

Also, meteorological seasons fit with my sense of the seasonal shifts in the calendar, to wit:

• Winter: December, January, February
• Spring: March, April, May
• Summer: June, July, August
• Fall: September, October, November

It doesn’t matter that the weather often fails to cooperate with these neat parameters. Here in southern New England, we’ve had snow in October and April. February temperatures may soar into the high 50s (as they did this year). Mid-September may be indistinguishable from mid-July, with green leaves and excellent beach weather. But our mindsets shift in accordance with these admittedly arbitrary seasonal shifts. December 1 is winter regardless of whether a snowflake has fallen. September is not only the beginning of the school year (although admittedly, many students return in August), but it signals a shift from summer’s relaxation to buckling down and returning to business.

The notion of these tidy seasonal shifts is especially appealing to me this year. Too much is changing: this week alone, I learned that two people in my immediate world are making major life changes that affect me. One is the music director at my church, who has accepted a new position in Georgia, mainly to be nearer to family. He has been with our church for nearly a decade, and he’ll be leaving in a few weeks. When I first came to St. John’s, the magnificent music was one of the first things to draw me in. We’ve had substitute organists at various times since I’ve been at the church, but they never felt quite right to me. While others are more directly affected, including the choir, the prospect of his departure leaves me feeling a bit unsteady.

The other person’s actions have a very direct effect on me. He’s my biggest client, and I’ve been doing work for him for twenty-six years. We’re an excellent team, having done dozens upon dozens of appeals together. We’ve spent countless hours debating law and logic and strategy. But he too is moving on, having finally achieved his dream of becoming a judge. One more week, and he will no longer be in private practice. When he told me this yesterday, I asked reasonably, “What about all our appeals?” We’re presently in the thick of the most procedurally complicated matter either of us has ever dealt with—and, for what it’s worth, the Appellate Court doesn’t seem to know how to solve our issues either. Plus, we recently won our first petition for certification to the Connecticut Supreme Court, which means we’ll soon be preparing a Supreme Court brief in a matter that’s all about calculations (which, as we both know, is not my long suit). Since I’m his subcontractor, I work for him, not his clients. This means that with his departure from the firm, it’s anybody’s guess who in that firm will take over as lead counsel on these appeals. More importantly for my present concerns, since I work for him, it is his firm, rather than his clients, who pays me. Without him at the helm, this income stream is very likely to dry up once these existing appellate matters are completed. Since work for him comprised more than half of my income last year, this presents a very real concern.

I know, of course, that change happens all the time. It’s the nature of being. Priorities shift. New loved ones enter our world even as others exit. We’re all getting older, and our bodies are breaking down, no matter how fervently we work to stave off the inevitable decay. A friend who recently reached the age of 60 took up body-building a few years ago, and while he looks amazing (and his percentage of body fat is much, much lower than mine), he’s still battling other physiological issues that all the working out in the world can’t fix.

I sometimes look back on where I was twenty years ago, when I didn’t know how good I had it. Loved ones who have since passed were still alive. Clients who have since retired or died were still sending me work, keeping my income relatively steady. People I relied on for various matters, from health care to home repairs, had not yet retired or moved on to other lines of work. My closest friends still lived nearby. I enjoyed a luxury I didn’t even known I had, namely, the freedom to focus on the substance of life because the logistical details, such as who I could call or consult or have lunch with, were so well-established as to be invisible.

And yet, even as I recall those days, I recognize the rose-colored hues with which I surround such memories. Those times were replete with their own struggles, not the least of which involved questions about my future. Frustrated by the sense that I was wasting my life, I searched for meaningful ways to fill my days, a search which led me to volunteer at a local soup kitchen and take my first short-term missions trip to Thailand. I hadn’t yet discovered a now-defunct fan fiction site where I not only found like-minded friends, but also my love of writing and storytelling, so long buried that I’d thought it gone forever. I had no idea what lay ahead, the wonderful as well as the devastating.

Life is change. We can’t stop it. People will enter our worlds, and people will leave, regardless of whether we welcomed them in or wanted them to stay. Bodies and buildings will break down with age, requiring care and repairs to extend their useful lives until all the fixes in the world ultimately prove inadequate. What was cutting-edge—8-track tapes, car phones, VCRs—has become obsolete, and what once seemed to be exotic, like portable computers and laparoscopic surgery, has become commonplace. The Wright brothers’ first flight took place in 1903; less than 70 years later, a man walked on the moon.

Some changes are wonderfully positive, such as society’s shift toward accepting those whose identities, orientations, and relationships fall outside the realm of what was deemed proper as recently as the 1950s, and yet I know people who struggle with such developments as interracial couples, same-sex marriages, or just referring to an individual as they. Even when the changes have no immediate effect on our lives, such as my town’s increasing number of charging stations for electric vehicles (I drive an elderly gas-powered vehicle), they still stand as evidence that for better and worse, everything changes, and the only questions are when and how.

Which, I think, is one reason I’m fond of the meteorological seasons. Their predictability is restful: March 1 is March 1. It requires no special thought, no adjustment, no effort. Not that the vernal equinox has any particular meaning for me, but I find a tiny comfort in the fact that while it marks the beginning of a new season for some, it’s no concern of mine. Spring is already here. Done is done. In this world where we continually try to maintain our balance on shifting sand, it’s reassuring to know that while growth and change are inevitable—and often good—a few things really are simple, clear, and unchanging.