My son says to me as he hears more and more people that he knows being laid off, “Mom, people now know what it’s like to be an artist.”

When folks ask me how I’m doing in these times I say, “Being an artist really helps me a lot in times like this.”

And what I mean by that is as an artist I never take for granted good financial times. My habit has been to sock it away, because there are always rainy days in the arts and hurricanes happen, and I guess now we even get the occasional typhoon.

I also know that the process of painting has taught me a lot about life’s lessons. Life’s different paths for me have never been straight and narrow, they have always been circuitous, uncertain, just like painting. Without an ongoing hope and faith, being an artist is almost impossible, and I have found that hope and faith becomes essential for living circuitous pathways.

And living in Newburyport, New England has helped me understand that creatively there can be no spring without a dormant winter. And I am no longer afraid of life’s winters because I know that life, like the seasons, is cyclical, and that spring always happens, no matter how long or how harsh winter may be.

And certainly right now, globally and as a country we are experiencing one of those long harsh Newburyport, New England winters, one that starts sometime in November and lets up sometime in April. But even in February, on the side of the street where the sun is warmest, early signs of spring begin to show. At the very top of high trees, a reddish hue becomes visible, and the buds on bushes and trees plump up. All signs of hope. All signs of spring.

So in an atmosphere of hopelessness, anxiety and often fear, I remind myself, that even in these times, spring and then the long hot summer will, as it always does, arrive once again.