Happy equinox, whatever your climate

Che and I were both baking in Havana

I seem to have fallen out of Nature. When they built my apartment a hundred years ago, they didn’t bother with niceties like insulation, and my toes remember cold winter days when they fantasized about thick socks and soft slippers. But my armpits are mindful of the recent relentless drip of summer’s sunshine sweat, when shade was salvation and water the only goal that mattered. Such is the thermal chaos when you hop from the (relative) chill of California winter to the motivated baking of the Cuban sun, which doesn’t believe tall tales of winter cold.

Hot metal in the streets of Santiago de Cuba

We were sweating in Havana when they told us that in our next destination, Santiago de Cuba, “It’s twice as hot as here.” This was not unwelcome news, since I would happily spend the rest of my life in shorts and flip flops, but a few hours taught us that it’s not a good idea to walk around too long in the sun in Santiago. Your first reminder is the wooziness.

Santiago is…

In Santiago we…

In the narrow streets of homicidal drivers and Caribbean splendor were...too many things to tell of right now, there will be time for that. But today I’m looking at the orchid that erupted on my kitchen counter while we were gone, the birds paired up in the water of Lake Merritt, and the confident warmth of a sun that’s coming back into its strength. Today is the equinox, transition point between winter and spring, and nature needs no customs agent (thank goddess). Spring has already opened the drapes, and after the hardest winter of my life thus far, I am ready to greet it with open arms.

Cuba is a place of endless stories, and I’ll try to pick a few (I promise they won’t all involve my armpit sweat), but today I am happy where I am, focused on now, loving this moment. There’s a certain preschooler (who we missed every day abroad) practicing his letters to my left, a cup of tea in front of me, and a window open to spring’s flirtation on the right, so with a grin and a toast I greet you: happy spring, my friends!