O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?
--Shelley
Let’s face it, 2020 has been a bummer. Topping the list of wretched events: the spread of COVID-19. Equally dreadful, though not as deadly, is the descent of our country’s standing under Trump’s lack of leadership, demagogic buffoonery, and a full-scale attack on decency, if not on democracy itself. Those two calamities have caused a parade of misfortunes to follow that have plagued everyone and caused worldwide anxiety and suffering.
In the natural course of events, though, after a hard rain (even forty days and forty nights of it) comes a splash of sunshine; after an illness comes recovery (usually), after the war comes peace, after grief comes acceptance, and after a sinner goes to confession, a priest usually offers forgiveness. I suppose, most things being arguable, one could quibble over any of these assertions, but, finally, let’s agree that misfortune runs its race and eventually comes to the finish line. After World War I, the war to end all wars, came a period of peace leading to World War II. And so on. After the Great Depression with its shanty towns and failed Hoover initiatives came Roosevelt and the New Deal. After a hurricane wind tears off the roof, we get the hammers and saws and ladders and eventually the repair job is better than the roof was before the storm. Bad stuff always presents itself, and then we face it and deal with it. Mostly, we know the rhythm of fate; it comes and goes, always has, anyway. Though I suppose dinosaurs, if they could talk and reason, would quibble with that view.
Timing is the difficult part to appreciate because we just don’t know how long it takes for bad stuff to break down and blow away. It is not like tide charts, ebb and flow details according to a precisely calculated schedule. No, we have to wait it out with the realization that today is not tomorrow.
Pardon the schmaltz, but I recall a line of poetry written by classmate of mine in high school. I admired his work and thought his artistic powers were unequaled for someone so young. Looking back, I suppose he was brilliant in that high school context and for his age and exceptional intellect, but because I have had a lifetime of experience as a teacher and avid reader of poetry, I now know that his poem was good but not exactly groundbreaking. Still, the line sticks in my mind: “Rainbows come on rainy days.” What a thought, I thought. What a beacon of wisdom. And it is. Was. Always will be. It highlights what we already know, which means, I suppose, the line reprocesses a lyrical thought that many writers have made over the centuries.
So, of course, spring follows winter and rejuvenation comes after the leaves fall and the snow melts. The plague will end. Trump will be just an unpleasant footnote in history. Right now, though, a sun-kissed future is hard to imagine. But it will come. It will come.