Monday dawned just a bit cool and breezy — after all, it is March — just right for a lightweight jacket as I moved out into the world. But by the time dinner (if you’re from here) or lunch (if you’re not) rolled around, the combination of that jacket and Mr. Sun made me anything but chilly.
The day grew warm and then warmer and sometime during it, I realized the day on the calendar was March 21 — the first day of spring. It got warmer and stayed warm. Even after sunset, the computer weather spot said temps were still in the 60’s.
As a side note here, in the past I would have bet the ranch that you were supposed to use capital letters when naming the seasons of the year in writing. If you didn’t, I reasoned, then Spring became spring, that place where water bubbles up out of the ground and Fall became fall, which is what you do when your feet get tangled up in your grandchild’s jump rope. However, since those long ago carefree teenage days of mine, Mrs. Mary Riggsbee, the world’s greatest high school English teacher, has told me more than once that you don’t do that. So, in a continuing effort to be a good student of hers, I follow her guidance.
There’s something really special about spring. It’s hard to put into words.
I’ve come to appreciate, even like, Winter ... er, I mean, winter. The cold of the air, the smell of wood burning, the taste of homemade vegetable soup, the sight of freshly fallen snow all mean more now than once before. There was a time when I railed against snow. How dare it mess up my schedule and all the important things I had to do.
Then sometime — I don’t know for sure when — it became apparent Mother Nature didn’t give a flip for my plans. I came to see snow and cold weather as an opportunity to slow down, and now I’m sad when we don’t get much. Of course, I still don’t want to move to North Dakota, and I can be testy when the snow turns into ice and the power lines come down. It’s really hard to watch television in the dark.
Each of the seasons has its own nature and personality. Winter (you still do use capital letters to begin a sentence, no matter the word) is the Old Man who moves slowly. Fall — or autumn, if you prefer — is the Wise Mature One, and summer comes across as a mix of maturity and frivolity (reminds me of me), age and experience coupled with some fun. But spring when it comes is like starting all over again. It’s like a child, a new life, a chance to do better.
No wonder so many like it.
Spring brings so much good without so much bad, especially in the way of weather. Sure, there can be spring thunderstorms, but there are no hurricanes, no major blizzards, usually not much more than a late frost, and for us with troubled sinuses, there’s the advent of pollen and hay fever.
But it also brings the start of baseball and the time when many a young man finds his fancy turning toward thoughts of love. The buttercups show their yellow heads, the spring calves learn they can frolic across the pastures, which themselves are turning green. Windows are flung open. The air just smells better.
I’ve often wondered why, as good as it feels, spring doesn’t last longer. And the answer may be like it is with so many other good things — that we just couldn’t handle it if it were much longer. It’s sort of like the New York Strip steak — if we had one every day, pretty soon we wouldn’t appreciate it ... plus our cholesterol would be out the roof.
But isn’t it great right now? Just when it’s starting and we realize that it is.
Bob Wachs is a native of Chatham County and retired long-time managing editor of the Chatham News/Chatham Record, having written a weekly column for more than 30 years. During most of his time with the newspapers, he was also a bi-vocational pastor and today serves Bear Creek Baptist Church for the second time as pastor.
