Spring

 

The spring equinox occurs today at 10:46 a.m. Of course, the nights have been getting shorter and the days growing longer in the northern hemisphere for months now (since right after Christmas actually).Theoretically, they are equal in length today all over the world.

But longer days are just one aspect of spring - and by no means the most striking. After one of the coldest winters in recent years, the first change one notices is the warmer temperatures. Over a week ago already the temperatures suddenly climbed into the 70s and even hit 80 - summer-seeming days in late winter. But then it got colder again (even as the West Coast is enduring excessively high, summer-like temperatures); and, of course, the temperatures here will likely see-saw up and down between now and summer. Yet the trajectory of the mercury is unmistakable.

With warmer weather suddenly comes the rebirth of the natural world, the greening of the city that so recently was all white with a covering of snow. The truest, most telling signs of spring are, of course, the green shoots rising up out of the earth and the colorful buds suddenly appearing on the trees. Sadly, spring flowers activate allergies, but they are beautiful nonetheless. Sadly too they last only a while, as spring inevitably will give way to the enervating and oppressive heat of summer.

Seasonal changes of clothes were more important and more ritualized when I was growing up. People wore "spring coats" in the spring. But then spring seemed to last longer as a real season - not the short interval it increasingly appears to have become between the extreme cold of winter and the extreme heat of summer. That said, the green shoots rising up out of the earth and the colorful buds suddenly appearing on the trees invite us to appreciate their uniqueness, however brief.