Spring is here... the days are getting longer and warmer. After a cold dark winter, and even longer time spent in self-imposed isolation, it's time to emerge and flourish. It's time for the cicadas.

Yes, after 17 years in the ground, slowly growing toward adulthood, the Brood X will emerge in the mid-Atlantic (ground zero for your humble writer) and drive everyone nuts for a month. It's almost as if 2021 told 2020 "hold my beer".

Between mid-May and mid-June, we will have to listen to the loud "singing" of billions of these little insects. Our dogs (one in particular) have been eating them as fast as they emerge, but that's only our yard. There are trees everywhere in our neighborhood and city, and cicadas love trees (they need them to lay their eggs after mating).

There is a certain analogousness (is that a word?) to us humans. After being sequestered for over a year, we too are ready to emerge into the "normal" world again and mate (or at least have some fun). With the vaccine, the warm weather, and quiet competent leadership in the White House, we're standing outside, blinking in the sunshine like a cicada newly emerged from its larval shell.

Like the cicadas, we have also have those of whom we need to be wary. There are those who refuse to get the vaccine due to pseudo-(and outright fake)-science, those who don't trust the government, and those who refuse to get it to "own the libs". These are the same people who were anti-mask, and generally for the same reason.

But like the cicadas, we have sheer numbers on our side. We will prevail and survive because the enemy is small. We will survive and sing in the sunshine, and the spring will signal the transition to the next phase of our lives.

Emerge and thrive!