Waking up in the semi-dark of daylight savings time dawn I look out on the city street and sigh. Spring didn’t get here yet. The trees are naked of everything save a few confused birds who took last weekend’s warm temperatures to mean the Northeast had preceded the vernal equinox. The squirrels on running on the damp sidewalks searching for food and I am hiding under my pillow once again regretting another day of wearing a coat.
I need spring in my life.
Mother Nature teases us with temperatures that we usually see in May and we shed the heavy coats and walk about feeling somewhere fresh air on our limbs for the first time since October. Sidewalk cafes have the nerve to pull out their tables and chairs and joggers have donned their short pants. This is the moment we have all waited for every time we shoved ourselves into the two sweaters, the big coat, the hat with ear flips and gloves so thick you can’t really hold onto anything with your hands. It is the moment of melting ice falling on your forehead, of snow darkened by exhaust from cars trying to dismount the frozen mounds turning into runoff of barren heads and quite often exposed bosoms.
Everyone has on a coat today. Saturday most people wore sweaters and dared to walk in flip flops and sandals even as the snow was still melting. There is a chance of rain. There is always a chance of something nowadays. On Friday February 27 my sister in Columbus, Georgia, hid in her downstairs bathroom as the town sirens went off with a tornado warning. The next day she emailed me pictures of the six inches of snow they got. In Atlanta Sunday March 1, no one went anywhere because the wind and snow made a mess of everything. On Monday March 2, New York public schools closed for the first time in years because one snowfall that was followed by a windstorm that was to be followed by another snowstorm. Fortunately the latter was blown out to sea. By Thursday March 5, my friends in rural Virginia were into their fifth day without electricity due to whatever had blown their way.
We all need some spring.
I usually get off the bus at a park in the warmer days and stand on a hill that looks down to the children’s playground then to the West Side Highway and the Hudson. Not one shard of grass has reared its vibrant head. The barren trees like like unclothed dancers waiting for a song. Their slim branches bow in the mild wind. I pull the trench coat tighter, thankful for the gloves in my pocket and the hat on my head. In the spring when all the trees are lush and green I can barely see New Jersey for this leafy canopy. Today I see everything and its almost bleak. On top of it all I am feeling a chill. The old folks would say thats because I took off my hat a few days ago when it was too warm to wear one. You’re not supposed to take off your winter hat until the season has completely ended, otherwise you’ll get sick.
But the way things are going who knows when the seasons actually begin and end. Its 90 degrees in Columbus, Georgia now. It may be 40 tomorrow.
I remind myself that I wanted to live in the north, that I just had to live in New York. Winter was once fun here before global warming. It came with its intolerable cold days and snow that ended up piled high in corners of Westchester Country and Long Island community parking lots. It started and stopped when it was supposed to. There was no tease of sixty degree weather followed by the gotcha with 12 inches of snow. We went from coats to jackets to summer, not coats to jacket to coat to summer to jacket to coat again. Is this the future we have made for ourselves by torturing the environment instead of loving it? Remember the commercial “Its not nice to fool with Mother Nature”. Well, you know what payback is every time you have to pull out that cashmere sweater AGAIN.
Spring should officially arrive at 7:44 am EDT on March 20, 2009. I plan to wear a bright colored something- coat, jacket, bathing suit. I plan to smile and pretend that the remaining birds are chirping and the ray of snow that I see is shining through clouds that will move on and leave nothing but the tail end of a shadow. I will got out to toast the arriving equinox and hope that I don’t freeze my tail off sitting in an open air cafe. I hope it doesn’t snow on the first day of spring in New York but it has before.
We made a mess of the economy and the environment. We may never see spring again.
Who knows what the weather has in store for us ?
