Spring Sprang Sprung Sproing

When I was a child, spring was a vast expanse of time stretching from Easter all the way to those last days of school before summer vacation. It's not like that anymore for a couple of reasons. First, I live in L.A. now and most of our year is like spring. It smells and feels like a beautiful Easter Sunday on a disproportionate number of days. It's amazing, and it's one of my favorite things about living here. But spring is not a season here, really. It's like the default setting. Second, even spring in New York is a truncated affair. I remember there being a couple of months of spring weather. Crocuses and daffodils popping up out of the yellowish grass, cool mornings giving way to warm afternoons, light jacket weather. But that whole thing seems gone. It's dreary old winter, a week of "spring" and suddenly it's humid and hot and summer. Which brings me to my third reason (and this might contribute to the severity of reason #2), as I get older, time just zooms right by. Spring probably felt longer when I was a kid because everything felt longer when I was a kid. The wait for Christmas was interminable, as I recall.

I'm not saying the spring season hasn't actually shrunk in NY, because it really so. My parents can attest to spring being a week or two between snow and mosquitos, but when I was a kid, it was a beautiful time that went on for a while.

Even when I developed allergies, spring was still my favorite season. Who didn't love those first warm days after an eternity in the dark and cold of NY winter? Who doesn't feel renewed by the first green shoots of grass jumping up out of the ground? Who doesn't enjoy shedding layers and layers of down and wool, and re-emerging like a butterfly in a nice light jacket? Wait, did I mean the butterfly was wearing the nice light jacket? Never mind. Spring is awesomeness, and I just figured out why.

It's like a recurring theme with me. Every fourth blog or so (not planned, by the way) I talk about the idea of possibility. Spring is the earth's way of showing us possibility coming to fruition. When I was younger, that time seemed endless, and therefore possibility seemed endless. When spring is shortened (damn you, global warming! ), those flowers don't get to come up with the same glory. That emergence from winter's cocoon isn't quite as sweet.

L.A.'s eight-month-long spring is great, but it's easy to take for granted. Without the awful damp, cold darkness of February, can one really appreciate May? I am grateful to live in a place where we frequently experience cooler mornings, sunny and warm afternoons, and brisk evenings. A few days ago L.A. suffered a two-day heat wave that saw temperatures soar into the triple digits, and I was afraid for a minute that spring had already been replaced by summer. But L.A. doesn't experience that truncated spring yet (and hopefully never will); our summer really hits its stride in August. Today is sunny with a brisk breeze. It feels like Easter Sunday again, and it feels like possibility again.

I feel like I'm coming out of a very long winter, and I'm glad it feels like spring. I'm an orange crocus bulb, no, purple! and I'm just pushing up until my head breaks the surface of the ground. I think I'll go and sit in the sun for a while and drink some water and enjoy spring like a good little flower.

~Hero