The Last Day of Winter

Posted by Rich - Where I come from, the last day of winter and the first day of spring are usually pretty similar to the days we experience in the middle of the winter. The first day of spring in Upstate NY was typically pretty cold with noticeable accumulations of snow still on the ground and large piles of dirty, hard packed ice acting as a miniature Continental Divide in most shopping center and mall parking lots. We would observe the calendar notation of the first day of spring still dressed in hats and gloves and boots, but also with a careful low-level excitement. You did not want to jinx the arrival of warmer weather by wearing shorts on a 40-degree day, or playing basketball outside in the icy puddles on the school playground. You always had to be careful; if the Gods of the Seasons noticed you were not paying Winter it’s due respect, then you could get zapped with a late April snow storm, or experience cold, rainy weather through Memorial Day.

So we would patiently bide our time, daring sometimes to wear your snorkel jacket unzipped or a baseball hat in place of a knit cap, but trying not to be too blatant. Sometimes, you would become confident enough that Winter was ending and not even bother to look for the glove or mitten you lost. And if you did lose a glove, it was always the left hand one- always- that went missing. At this time of year I usually had and still have 3 or four unmatched right-handed gloves of different colors and materials.

But still you waited, carefully, and watched for the signs of Spring. That first day of just rain, for instance, that made things sloppy but melted enough snow to reveal green lawns not seen since last Thanksgiving. Or the first 50 degree day you could walk home from school and notice that the snow banks you had climbed over for months were gone or not nearly as large as they had been, and the sidewalk and streets looked noticeably wider as the glacial piles of shoveled and plowed snow slowly receded. The occasional faint smell of earth, dirt, ground, unfrozen mud, whatever you may call it, gave afternoons a promise of warmer weather that would arrive and stay until summer ended.

Then it came, the TRUE First Day of Spring for us: It was marked as the first sunny afternoon you got your bike out. You may have had a jacket on still, and long pants, but when you could wheel your 20 inch two wheeler out of the back of the garage and feel the freedom of riding once again, then you felt Spring finally had arrived. On the First True Day Of Spring, you can take off that jacket and not have to hear your Mom yell at you to put it back on before you catch a cold. Toys you may have received as Christmas gifts could finally make an appearance outside. The baseball bats and gloves came out in the sunshine. Kids would spontaneously appear at the field behind the grade school and start hitting and throwing. Of course, you had to be careful of the remains of snowdrifts in left field stubbornly hanging on towards the shady side of the school building, and the gooshy ground behind third base. However, none of this dampened the absolute joy you felt playing in the warmth of the sun and the promise of longer days in the coming months. You knew in the back of your mind it could turn cold again tomorrow, the wind and rain could blow hard, and it could quite possibly even snow again once or twice.

This weather change could almost certainly be attributed to some kid, some where, who annoyed the Weather Gods by wearing shorts or acting too summerish too quickly and ignoring the fury Winter could still muster if provoked. But on this, the True First Day of Spring, it was the day you got your bike out of storage in the back of the garage and rode the newly widened spaces of the sidewalk and streets wet with melting snow banks. This was the day to forget about knit hats and lost gloves. Who could be blamed for getting excited that summer was on it's way, and jump the gun a little by wearing shorts? In retrospect, however, I probably should have put my jacket back on when my Mom told me to.