March 29, 2024

So Sorry, Spring!

It’s time to buy one of those jumbo apology cards and have everyone you know sign it. Clearly, we did something terrible to make spring so angry with us.

The winter woes may have frozen your creativity, but if you can thaw your heart (and pen!) to leave a sweet note to spring — instead of just signing your name — I’m sure she’d appreciate it. And I don’t want any sass about how spring is still a month away. You may consider this jumbo card premature, but do you really want to risk it? By now, we usually have seen signs of spring. A random sunny day in the snow regions. A bout of rain in the drought regions. That scent of new life in the crisp morning air. The sound of birds chirping. It may be fleeting in February, but spring usually pops up by now, just to say hello.

But not this year. Oh, no, not this year. I’m not pointing my finger, but I think it’s abundantly clear that we Americans peeved off spring, and now she has sent her big brother winter to give us all a collective wedgie right up our Great Lakes crack.

I don’t like wedgies. Or toilet swirlies. Or being stuffed in my locker. Or being stuffed in my home, all day, every day. The endless cycle of flu fever, cabin fever, flu fever has lost its glamour. Even the delirious hallucinations that accompany the high temperature on my thermometer only bring images of snowbanks. Enough is enough.

No offense to winter. (Please don’t hit us with another snowy sucker punch! We won’t tell the principal on you; we swear!)

Heck, I am a winter baby myself, born the day before spring begins. Some of my fondest memories from childhood were when winter would travel all the way up and kiss spring like the prince kissing Sleeping Beauty into wakefulness.

When I turned 10, my friends took the sleeping bags they had brought over for my birthday slumber party out onto my front lawn, and we sledded down my hill on them until midnight. But the reason this evening of drenching our sleeping bags on the iced-over snow was such a delight was we knew spring was coming. There was no question, no fear. The next morning, as my friends and I sat around my kitchen table eating cereal, we watched the warm snow melt away the previous night’s mayhem. As it should have. As it always had. As it always will — maybe.

I implore all of you to take a serious look at yourself and consider what you may have done to hurt spring’s feelings. Our jumbo card should be filled with heartfelt apologies if we want to ensure her arrival next month. It can be hard to look at yourself, your community, your world with a critical eye, but surviving a yearlong winter will surely be harder. Here is what I have come up with:

At first, I thought our nationwide obsession with “Game of Thrones,” an obsession I rabidly partake in, was to blame. The show’s prophetic tag line is “Winter is Coming.” Perhaps our love affair with all things Stark offended our dear sweet spring! What’s worse, we may have built up winter’s ego, thus resulting in the cocky bravado we’ve been left to suffer through. But blaming television felt like a cop-out. I had to look deeper. I had to make my search more personal.

It was a real head-scratcher. I’ve always been a nature lover. Spring means a return to the great outdoors, to hiking, to bug catching, to sports! And that’s when I stumbled upon my area of fault: baseball season.

Spring begets baseball. Baseball begets my fury. Don’t get me wrong; I usually love going to baseball games. But this past year, bringing my baby to four-hour games was a nightmare.

The sunscreen. The bugs. The heat. The rain.

I must have cursed the elements 100 times per game. And in doing so, perhaps I insulted the sweet harbor and home of baseball — spring.

It’s time to right this wrong; I’m crafting a beautiful note for the jumbo apology card, the one I hope you all sign. With our power combined, we will see spring bloom in no time.

Just one question: Does anyone have spring’s mailing address?