There are days I doubted it would. I was convinced this past winter was too hard and the storms too violent. There was a stretch of about a month when it rained everyday, with spans of record-breaking torrential pours, and I worried our garden would wash away (some of it did). But yesterday out in our little orchard I was delightfully stunned - the fruit trees are budding! Peach, plum, nectarine and apple trees have all sprouted tightly bound promises.

When I came here I asked for the whole thing.

I didn’t want easy.
I didn’t want boring.
I wanted big.
I wanted surprises.
I wanted high caliber humor and lots of rosy-cheeked humility.
I wanted ecstatic peaks and abysmally dark valleys.

Deep in the timeless space of a heavy contraction I envisioned the energy it must have taken the universe to be born, and that this birth felt like a microcosm of the original big bang - carrying with it the same magnitude of exquisite profundity. I thought - if the cosmos could yield to the birthing contractions, so could I. After all, aren’t I made of the same star stuff?