This has been the winteriest of wintery winters for almost everyone from everywhere that I have spoken to. I have been telling my friends that I will believe spring is coming when I see it, but not before. The almanac, which has been eerily accurate, says the biggest storm of the winter is still to come. So I’ve been hiding my need for spring underground, bracing myself for more white beauty. But today the sun was shining, birds have migrated home, there is actual green on the ground and suddenly anything seems possible. And I know it’s true, I feel it in my cells and bones, all things are possible.

And today I got a new (used) car. Her name is Dorothy. A 2008 Subaru Forester with only 22,700 miles. The Native Americans believe that everything – everything – has a spirit. This refers to a flashlight, a TV or a car as much as rocks and trees. Each has a unique combination of cells that animate a unique spirit. I felt this palpably today as I was saying good-bye to the car that had brought me here from Los Angeles and has so reliably taken me anywhere I needed to go since then. That car never got a name; it was just my survival car, the one that literally carried me from one world to another. I loved it every day that I drove it and felt so safe in it. Saying good-bye and trusting a new car felt huge for me. I was excited but very uneasy. On the way home, as I was saying to my new little car, here is the mountain, you will call this home, you will be bringing me home on this road –  the name Dorothy occurred to me. Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz was always trying to find home. For the majority of  the years of my life I had called Los Angeles home, and I have been working to create a new sense of home here. This new car seemed to be a symbol of something new carrying me, a new sign of home.

Today is just after the New Moon and right before the Equinox. Spring has rarely been so breathlessly anticipated by so many it seems, nor new reasons for hope so longed for. I feel the newness happening. Dorothy is just a tiny symbol speaking to me, but a symbol that I believe is calling me to belief in something bigger. A health care bill might get passed! People who have never had coverage might now have coverage! My daughter who has diabetes might not be uninsurable anymore!

No matter what, I think that holding the frame of mind that anything is possible, all things are possible, nothing is impossible is the way forward. This spring, the imminence of explosions of new life, feels to me that it brings with it nothing but possibility.