It has been a long winter. A hard winter. It was warm, so warm that even Confederate-flag waving rednecks began to grumble about climate change. It was muddy and gray and dark, but balmy in a way that felt disgusting. In German, there is a word, warmduscher, which translates to “warm-showers.” It refers to someone who prefers their water neither ice-cold nor scalding hot, but lukewarm. It means someone who is weak, milquetoast, unremarkable, smarmy, mild. (Or as one online translation puts it, a “candy-ass.”)

This winter left me feeling like that—impotent. Lacking in potency. Lacking in strength, character, intensity.

I have never been so glad to see the signs of spring. And it’s finally a true spring, where greenery begins poking out of the earth, making its way back up through the muck. I feel myself coming back, too. It’s a physical thing, this new awareness of my body, this reawakening of my energies. I stretch and every joint in my limbs cracks and pops, a little aching chorus of movement.

I’m the kind of person who needs my showers hot or cold. I would rather cry until my eyes are raw than stare silently at a wall, quiet resentment settling like yeast in a glass of beer.

Goodbye, warm-winter. Good riddance.

[Image above by” x-ray artist” Hugh Turvey of hyacinths in bloom, taken from The Telegraph]