Spring’s mixed signals
If you are like me, you are relishing sweet signs of spring that crowd your senses like April customers at an ice cream counter.
Signs like a dramatic improvement in Mr. Fahrenheit’s and Ms. Celsius’s attitudes. Signs like the births of a thousand tender green leaves. Like bevies of daffodils and tulips flaunting finery like little girls on Easter morning.
We are madly in love with spring, the only time of year when even joggers smile.
So do happy flocks of cyclists and those who zoom down streets on skateboards and scooters. Intoxicated with warm weather, they forget that narrow-minded laws of physics do not care if it is spring. They still insist the riders cannot occupy the same space as a car.
Dodging them like a storm’s first raindrops, I reward myself for displaying supreme patience. I roll down all the windows and turn up the Beach Boys until they bellow “Good Vibrations” so the entire Western Hemisphere can enjoy.
What, that’s not everyone’s favorite spring sound?
Why did it also shock me, upon throwing open my house’s windows, when not every sound is as musical as the pitter-patter of April rain? All winter, I have dreamed of breathing fresh, warm breezes of spring. Maybe I repressed the possibility they would carry the background buzz of interstate and raceways, the roars of convoys of motorcycles, and the growls and grunts of hungry garbage trucks.
Though Indiana weather is always iffy, you and I, for the most part, consider scraping windshields and icy roads perils of the wintry past. Driving is now easy.
Surprise! Road construction and road closing signs, like the season’s first weeds, have popped up along every highway.
Are we still in love with spring? Absolutely, the minute we sniff the fragrances of apple and lilac blossoms mingling with those of lighter fluid, charcoal, and hamburgers, wafting throughout our neighborhoods. We give in to the mad urge to clean our grills for the first time this season (and the last).
Even the first smell of sunblock, now required for outdoor forays, becomes a portent of warmer and better things.
Spending more time in the yard, though, awakens us to the realization that snow no longer covers questionable yard ornaments, such as Burger King cups, broken pencils and soaked letters from the IRS. That the only green in our yards is found in the gravel driveway. That hundreds of small stones, shoveled with snow into the yard, might cause sulky lawnmowers — already reluctant to start — substantial grief. And finally, that we really should retrieve flattened Santa Clauses before the Association to Prevent Cruelty to Inflated Decorations demands an intervention.
Are we still in love with spring? Absolutely, as Hubby and I know the perfect antidote for home improvement commercials: getting away from it all, aka, camping. When the first ray of springtime sun penetrates March’s gloom, he begins preparations for our escape. Researching desperately needed new camping gadgets — er, equipment — represses melancholy anticipation of yardwork, repairs, and remodeling. New purchases bloom on our Visa like dandelions. Never mind that when he sets up the camper in preparation for the first camping trip, a few hundred mice resent his intrusion into their winter home. And that the little kitchen’s faucet has broken, creating a swimming pool just for them. Yes, Hubby has escaped home improvement!
I, however, cannot escape the trauma of giving up yummy winter comfort food for endless salads and grilled chicken. Now we must consume odd meals from the ice-encrusted freezer — such as squash and smelt surprise — as I make room for summer garden vegetables that, as of now, are only imaginary.
The smelt and squash casserole was not so bad. It beat the rhubarb-succotash dish, covered with ancient turkey gravy.
And we are still in love with spring. Right, dear?