Are We Ready For Renewal?

The last weeks of winter aren’t pretty in our part of the world.

White snow turns brown. White people turn pasty.

Shoes carry a telltale ring of salty residue, a sure sign someone has stepped into slush for the 16th consecutive day.

Cars look as if nobody cares, because nobody does.

Why bother?

Any attempt to wash off the thin film of late-winter grime only leads to immediate irritation once the tires turn out of the carwash.

Is this why 7,100 people turned out for the Spokane Chiefs hockey game on Wednesday night?

A diversion in the big city, an alternative to cabin fever?

It could be worse.

We could have spent the winter in Seattle. They molded beneath 32 inches of rain in the last 100 days - a record.

Or, we could have spent the winter in the Washington state Legislature where absolutely nothing happened. Not a record.

So, let’s get on with this month, speed it up, roll it on through.

You feel this sentiment in classrooms. Children’s eyes are beginning to look ahead on the calendar, counting the weeks until spring break.

You see it on the streets. A young woman waiting for a bus on Friday was wearing shorts - and her winter gloves.

Even the die-hard skiers are sick of the season. The snow may be great for another month, but the hills won’t be crowded.

It’s just time to change from ski gloves to gardening gloves. That is, unless you are a Republican running for president. Then you just take off the gloves in March and pound away.

Yet another reason for the month to go out like a lion, a lamb, or a lettuce, but go.

Having struggled with the recent loss of my mother, I am particularly looking forward to spring, to a time of renewal.

The idea of renewal, I think, is one of the most optimistic human notions.

Renewal does not suggest everything is, or has been, perfect.

Indeed, renewal first requires the act of being run down, drained, or flattened.

To be personally renewed, or to renew a relationship or life’s endeavor, suggests a period of decline, stagnation or failure that has just passed or will soon end.

Like winter evenings, dark times are inevitable in this life. These same dark moments allow the seeds of possibility and renewal to germinate.

Once renewal breaks through the dark earth, the energy, vigor, and vision would be difficult to overestimate.

Think of Chicago after the fire, or Spokane after the rail yards left downtown, or Coeur d’Alene after silver dropped from $50 an ounce to $5.

Think of Bob Dole after the war injuries or Nelson Mandela after apartheid.

The comeback can, and often does, double the low mark from before.

Perhaps this is wishful thinking, but some signs suggest renewal is having a revival.

In my office, the nasty letters to the editor have fallen off in recent weeks.

In Spokane, the audience for the meanest of the talk radio shows has dropped way off.

In the nation, there are more voices than ever before suggesting we’re overestimating our difficulties and must draw on personal renewal to get on with things.

Just as the alcoholic cannot be helped until until he or she seeks it, renewal doesn’t begin until a page turns in a life and a new beginning can be outlined.

I’m not sure cynics can be renewed.

I don’t think renewal can be triggered by deciding to make more money, get revenge, or watch out more intently for Number One.

Renewal, like spring, comes a day at a time.

First a robin, then a daisy, then the warmth of a new day.

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the Editor of The Spokesman-Review. His column appears each Sunday.