Spring Arrival

Despite logic and science and everything else, each year I remained convinced that winter will never end. There is a part of me that remains sure that June and July will roll around and temperatures will still be below freezing, frost will still be forming on the windows, and I'll be walking into work swaddled in down coats and multiple scarves.

Even as spring progresses, each time there is a small dip in the temperatures back towards freezing or there is a random spring snow flurry, I want to shout out, "See, I knew winter would last forever."

Which is why, every year, when the season fully transitions to spring, I'm in amazement.  I feel in awe of the warm weather that allows us to run around without jackets. Each blooming tree and sprouting bulb excites me. I'm ecstatic over the return of robins and butterflies and budding branches. 

I want to run around, photographing each and every single flower. I want to turn cartwheels in the new grass. I want to loudly proclaim that spring is here...

Wait, I actually do all those things.

Most places I've lived before, spring is a transient period, a gradual warming from the coldness of winter to the sweltering of summer. 

Spring in the Midwest is prolonged and substantial, an almost cleanly delineated event. It's negative twenty degrees outside and then suddenly, it's not. The world is full of flowers and sunshine and balmy breezy days. Then, just as suddenly, the days are hot and humid and full of cicadas and fireflies and it's summer. 

But between the frigid gray of winter and the lazy heat of summer, there is spring, bright and full and beautiful. 

Each year I doubt and each year I'm wrong.

I'm so happy to be wrong.  Spring is here.