spring cleaning

it's that time of year again when we go through the house and clean from top to bottom, making it look and smell fresh and clean. but how else do we go about doing "spring cleaning"? cleaning out closets. making new goals and trying for new beginnings with the birth of spring.

i dread cleaning and spring cleaning is no different. i guess i feel like it's a bigger job than it has to be. it doesn't help when it's gray and rainy outside. i know that when spring cleaning comes along i either go deeper into my winter blues or try to schedule other things, just pushing it off until a later time. that doesn't help any either.

my own issues with spring cleaning are deep rooted in my mind. i associate spring with new beginnings and new life. so in a way, i should be happy that it's spring cleaning time. but i'm not.

i went through a really dark period a couple of years ago after living through wild fires, not knowing if we would have a place to live and losing a baby at the beginning of the second trimester. i felt like nothing would ever be "good" again. i think it took me about four or five months to finally get to a place where i could say enough wallowing in self pity and get on with my life. i still think about that time sometimes and probably will forever, but i did get through it.

we had an orange grove behind where we lived that we had to drive past to get to our home. i felt like my mood and state of mind matched the way the orange grove looked after the fires. at first i was very withdrawn and felt very alone. js was with me but had other things that were, not necessarily more important, but more pressing at the time with school. a very good friend was there for me too and that helped immensely to be able to talk to somebody. the orange grove was gray and broken looking and that's how i felt.

as months and time went by the orange grove started to sprout new growth. my mood and state of mind started to lift and i could start to see the light. i realized that fires happen and miscarriages happen for reasons that i don't know and cannot control. maybe some day i will know why those things happened but i'm not dwelling on them anymore.

then when spring cleaning time came, we found out we were expecting again. we were cautiously excited and waited to tell family and friends until after we made it past where we were with our first pregnancy. it was not an easy pregnancy to say the least. there were many complications and concerns along the way but it was a successful pregnancy. we now have a very active, healthy, fifteen month old son, pbs. so i guess in our case, spring cleaning helped us to move forward.

happy spring cleaning!