Spring returns with blossoms and COVID-vaccinated hugs

With the first daffodils in bloom and 70-degree days, we usher in spring with great elation and expectation. A year of emotional and physical darkness is lightened by the onset of the season of color and renewal and transformation.

We will soon gather with loved ones who have two vaccines in their arms to celebrate the holidays of Easter and Passover. Our faces will beam in real-time, out of the Zoom Room, and our hugs will be hard and long and bring on more than a few tears.

I will not miss shouting at those friends in freezing weather from 6 feet away who cannot understand what I am saying behind my two masks. Though, I will still wear those masks when necessary.

In these barren months void of the human touch, our 20-year-old cat has been the recipient of nonstop hugs, hugs I needed more than him, though he sweetly complied, purring and still.

Despite the psychic satisfaction of our virtual relationships, the human touch is what sustains all of us, face to face, instead of fist-bumping. Though the ease and instant gratification of hopping on a Zoom link appears destined to become a primary communication tool.

At the peak of the pandemic in April 2020, the company tracked 300 million daily video participants, a number that has stayed relatively steady. And since its inception in 2019, Zoom’s quarterly revenue has grown by 732.07%.

As much as I love Happy Hours in full-screen with my sister Fran in Chicago, how I long for that simple hug that shows the deepest expression of love without words. A hearty hug is the silent message that I care about you; you have real value to me. Those hugs will be even stronger in the coming weeks when that expression will also mean “I have missed you so much.”

Hugs can even make us live longer.

There have been numerous scientific studies on the effects of oxytocin, called “the bonding hormone,” on a human’s impulse to relax, which lowers stress. Oxytocin is released with a gesture as light as fingers brushed across someone’s cheek or an embrace. According to studies conducted by researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, even hugging twice a day is directly related to lowering blood pressure and the reduction of heart disease.

I am remembering the bone-crushing hugs from my parents that left me breathless and feeling fully loved. I am remembering hugging my own young sons and how I hated letting go as they tried to squirm free. Now those hugs with four young men mean my face is buried in their chests as they all stand well over six-feet.

I remember that soon I will sit outdoors at waterfront restaurants and I will rise to my feet as my girl gang approaches and we can finally embrace, and see each other laugh as we gossip and compare vaccine types and reactions.

The coming of human interaction and the splendor of Spring will be intoxicating.

With buds on trees and the turning of a season, we are reminded to be grateful for this moment, as we are inching out of a tunnel of fear and despair. We are filled with new courage as our leaders and scientists are taking on the enemy virus with intense focus and force.

Spring’s glorious arrival gives us another opportunity to stop, and literally smell the roses, to take stock of who we are right now, and how we want to unfold during the coming months. Like plants, people, too, can grow better and stronger and more inspired under the sun.

I cannot wait to swap out the fuzzy socks I have been wearing indoors during the pandemic for my red flipflops that will free my toes and psyche. Soon I will walk on the Baltimore-Annapolis Trail, through a patchwork of wildflowers, red and yellow and mauve. These paintings from nature are assurances of new beginnings.

This burst of nature at its most flamboyant is almost holy, a fitting backdrop for families sitting down for their Passover and Easter feasts. While our tables are filled with those we cherish most, we have moments of silence and grief for those loved ones missing. Thankfully, they live eternally through the power of memory.

I only have to look at a cluster of newly sprouted irises to be filled with the spirit of my parents, a mother who left us in 2006, a feather in 1986. They used to tell me the flower was named after me — and not the other way around.

The bounty of spring, the meshing of hope and beauty, is gorgeous and temporary. Knowing this should slow us down, to inhale and savor these fleeting blossoms that are soon to be filling our yards. I close my eyes and can already smell my peonies.

Today, I am on the screen porch reveling in the breeze of a 65-degree March morning. A small sailboat is skimming across the Severn River.

Soon I will move my pots of herbs that hibernated along the kitchen window during the cold weather back outdoors. Chives and rosemary, sage and thyme, will grow and change throughout the year, like we all will.

My trees are still bare but soon they will turn leafy and luminescent, and our home will be hugged by a cushion of green, comforting and glorious — like the human hugs that await.