Promise Rising

Walks with the pooch now begin with coaxing her off the front steps. She’s wary of the fog enshrouding our neighborhood, just as she is of the shadows in our hallway. Her eyesight is not as sharp as it once was, so I can only imagine how she’s interpreting the indiscernible darkness I pull her into every day.

But since this weekend, whiffs of green have been inching up from bulbs beneath the soil. Cardinals pierce the fog in song and color, a welcome avian change from the decapitated pigeons we were dodging on previous mornings. Spring is surely on its way and I hope for the sake of the pooch that she can smell it in the air.

Unless Miss Fortune steps in to turn my luck a different direction, this will be my last Spring in northern Illinois. I intend to note every new leaf and bud and irritating squirrel and hawk repast I encounter. Of course, I do this every year. But this season I want to commit it all to memory, to take with me wherever I’m headed next.

Spring never lasts long enough in this part of the world, but it’s weighted with renewal and hope—two keys to the future of the jobless. Cling to these and don’t let go, my fellow job-seekers. As the landscape alters, so will we.

[Pic by Kevin Bolton from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.]