We build it up with such expectations: love, new beginnings, or at least a definitive change from dull winter weather. We treat it like some young starlet and expect so much of it. But it's like any other adolescent: moody, flighty, and flat out disappointing sometimes. Spring is the eighth-grader of the seasons.
When I think of spring, I think of:
- sitting in a grade school classroom and looking out that big bank of windows at the rainy world like some inverse aquarium
- the college trips to Florida I never took with my friends because my parents said how much they wanted me home. So I would come home, and stay at home while my parents worked, and I had no car, and the only places I could walk to were McDonald's or car repair shops. And the weather stank. (I'm sure there were better parts than that, but this is what I remember.)
- flowers that come up and trees that bud out and birds that migrate early and late freezes that come and give them all what for
and also:
- 45-degree days (that's about 7 for you Celsioids) that made us run around outside in shorts and shirtsleeves and sundresses
- a discernible stirring of interest among lads and lasses
- lambs - Easter lambs! - it never dawned on me till I visited l'Ile d'Ouessant at Easter and saw new-minted lambs that yes, this is why lambs are associated with Easter/Passover/spring in general. (How would that be to have all your flock's birthdays in the same month? Imagine the strain of gift-giving!)
