Yes, Spring is here.
For me Spring always has brought a sense of hope. Maybe it’s because I would begin to plant seeds in cheese boxes on my sunny window sill in the tenement I lived growing up in Brooklyn. I loved looking at the seed packets, particularly the ones with marigolds and morning glory flowers on the covers. As I prepared the soil and began dropping seeds in the holes I had made, I had visions of the orange-golden marigolds blooming and the blue-purple morning glories growing along the fire escape on which I’d place the cheese boxes once it got warmer. Spring was also a time of playing hide and seek with my landlord. He did not want the flower boxes on the fire escape, so I would look outside the window the mornings when he would come to the apartment building, make sure to remove them, and then put them back later in the day when he left the building.
Nowadays, living near a park, I look longingly for signs of the early yellow crocuses and daffodills that will start emerging from the ground. I search desperately for the emerging leaf buds on the tree branches. I know that winter is now almost over and everything will be better in the world, and I can begin once more to dream of all the good things that the warmer, sunnier weather will bring.
When I was an adult and married, Spring to me always remained in my brain as the time when I first met my wife and the time in April when my daughter was born. So this time of year is always associated with deep happiness, a time of blessings.
Today, when I am much older, Spring to me is a time of joy, when the harsh, cold, depressing winter of New York is almost gone, and I can feel freer and less troubled again. I love the sun warming my face and body.
What about you? What hopes does Spring bring to you?
Or, tell me about a Spring in your life – maybe it was the year you fell in love, or maybe something else that was good happened to you. Or, maybe it was a very difficult Spring filled with rain and tears, but you still remember the time.
Write whatever you wish about Spring and what it means to you. Please share with us.