SIGNS OF SPRING
I’m not a fan of spring. I’m a winter person: I secretly loathe spring. Loathing spring is, I know, on par in terms of Bad Form with loathing small adorable children, loathing pie, loathing one’s own country. (I do like my country, I really, really do very much.)
But I find it hard to breathe in spring and I don’t like mud or feathers.
Last night, as we gathered in the parking lot at the Christian high school, at 6:15 pm, for the Thursday Night Ride, everyone was complaining how long winter had been. I wanted to say, “But not that long. Not long enough.” I love winter. I love snow and snuggly excitement and flannel sheets and Scrabble and cashmere and stew and cross country skiing. Spring—it’s so insistent. It’s loud. It’s unnecessary. It’s huge. Let’s get rid of it. I vote for Winter and Summer. I hate transitions. (See Students and Love, Above.)
I saw the first tulips on Tuesday, April 13. Red, screaming, they seem like citations. They seem like self-help books: BE HAPPY RIGHT NOW ALL YOU IDIOTS.
(I am however, brought to my knees, quite literally, in order to see exactly how many petals, by the carpets of blue violet scilla and and purple-blue chionodoxa.)
And last night, riding down 66th, with the wind as escort, snug in the middle of my pack of thirty co-cyclists, (so many of us!) I heard the acres of peepers. That sound, the sound of summer. I saw hawks and blackbirds.
I hunkered down and blew past Code and Mahaney, tucked in behind Jeanne and the Beck-inator, tried to catch Prudence on that amazing new Italian stallion she is riding…I rode hard as I could, like a kid, like a flag, and I did thirty miles. I am so proud of myself. Thirty miles, and strong! I always feel strong at the end, like I could do the whole thirty one more time.
Okay so hello, Spring. Hello, forsythia, blooming on the bushes today for the first time in a year. I see you. I hear you, shouty, perky, and crooked, zig-zaggy cross-cut saws of yellow-yellow. Yes, daffodils. You goofy cups. Hello, hyacinth—could you be any lower to the ground? Could you smell any more overtly beautiful? Last night, there were lovesick cats warring outside my bedroom window. Today, peepers, peepers, peepers.
It’s light until 8:30 pm. I’ve got my sunglasses on, my tax refund on the way, and also a sneeze on the way, which will become a month long event, and I am cruising down my street, hard, fast, and true, and inside the houses, all the televisions are on, and I remembering how sweet it always is, this world outside. Those true invisible frogs. The legs, the hopes, the bike.
And I see it could be real sweet again in some whole new way.
Spring.
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Thank you– someone else who finds spring to be a hard season! It’s colder than winter because it keeps teasing us to go out in wispy clothes. There’s enough sunshine to turn up the pressure to open the doors and windows! go out! sit outside to eat lunch! and then wham, it takes it all away again. Or it doesn’t, but that little edge of cold is exhausting.
I’m won over by the flowers every year, but it’s hard work. I’m a summer person and spring is mostly longing for summer.
I love the flowers and the singing frogs. And yet, I don’t love spring. I have tree allergies, so I spend the spring with itchy eyes and a desire to do nothing but sleep, which just seems very wrong with all the extra daylight and spring beauty going on out there.
Have you tried Zyrtec for your allergies? It’s the only thing that stops me from sneezing a hundred times a day all through April.