Springtime

I always refer to the coming of springtime as the "onset" of spring, as opposed to the "advent".  This is because it tends to be a long, slow, anti-climactic curve into warm weather, replete with all the environmental disruptions that naturally accompany such long, slow changes in the natural world.

The prevailing temperature segues from really really freezing to "temperate"- 50s or so into April, bringing warmer air temperatures, rain, and bouts of gray, lowering, cool dampness... the kind of air-borne "wet"  that cuts through your clothing and sucks away your naturally generated body heat, making the +/- 50-degree air temperature feel more like high 30s, unless the sun happens to be out that day.  In the early morning the prevailing temperature may be as low as high 20s or low-30s.  All-in-all, springtime brings with it not only the promise of sunny, warm days to come, but also the kind of weather we New Englanders call Raw.  One endures the onset of spring.

The piles of "snirt" (snow/dirt) that lie along your habitrails and tower over Target and Home Depot parking lots remain for weeks, piled up by the town or city snow-plows in front of your house and down the road, lining and straitening the way to school and work.  If, like us, you only have street parking, then over the tormentive weeks of spring-time change from winter to warmth you get to experience the slow-but-pretty-sure "joy" of inching closer to where the sidewalk actually exists in front of your abode, allowing you to periodically nudge your vehicle a little further off the middle of the street and toward the sidewalk.  You eventually find yourself experiencing the particular,  pleasurable relief that can only come from the soles of your shoes actually making contact with the surface of the steps that lead to your front door, newly (perhaps only mostly) unencumbered from the cold months of built-up frozen slush... now as likely to be un-frozen, puddly, grimy slush you take new pains to not track into your living room.  Still, it's nice to be able to see the ground.

So, yes.  Spring.  Ah, the pleasure, the new lightness of being, the awakening to new life and a brand-new start for all...  Meanwhile I'm still wearing my long underwear and not leaving the house without a hat.  We'll talk to you in another four weeks.