I am sick to the back teeth of winter. I am not actually someone who complains more than your average New Yorker. In fact, I try to complain less than your average New Yorker. There have been some beautiful things about this winter: my first married Christmas, quitting smoking, lovely green woolen hats and striped scarves, walking to bakeries in the snow, watching the city go dark and light up from my office window, warm sweaters and bear hugs from Stuart. On the whole, it’s been one of my better winters.
But there’s been a delay, a signal failure, a disruption of transmission. It’s snowing lightly and persistently out my window. This isn’t exactly okay. I need spring now. I’m ready. Everything in me is ready, and as with anything we wait for, I’m losing my patience. That feeling I get, when I’m already running late and there’s no subway in sight – I’m starting to feel it about spring. It’s that feeling of bubbling, childish anxiety rising through my throat, a wail of despair caught in a tangled net of helplessness and maturity combined. I’ve tried gently preparing myself for spring – why isn’t winter gently preparing itself to leave?
I’m ready! As a treat for another successful week of being healthy, Stuart braved the pushy salesgirl and the olafactory assault and bought me something else healthy – a huge tub of Olive Body Butter. The huge litre and a half of water I’m drinking a day is making my skin feel smooth and clear. The running and pilates are waking up muscles I didn’t know I had. I even broke last year’s embargo on dying my brown hair browner by seeing myself in Feria. And even though half of my closet is still banished to the Another Ten Pounds Pile, I’m getting a lot of joy lately out of the though of a short white jacket, a green tee shirt, a red necklace, tweed flats, and looser-fitting jeans.
I’m ready! My iPod rotation has gone from wintery dirges to light airy finger-snappers. My food cravings are leaning away from soups and potatoes to crunchy salads and fruits and panini sandwiches. On Saturday, we opened all the windows while we cleaned and it felt like my apartment and all its warm spring colors was being reborn.
I’m ready! My bounce, my energy, my sunglasses are all waiting, poised, on tiptoes, for spring. And it’s not here. And winter’s tentacles are gripping in deep. Rain. Frustration. Thwarted hopes around me, friends in pain or need. Muscles not responding properly. Winter, and its discontent, lingers.
I’m ready! I’m on a date with Spring and it’s late. Soon my corsage will wilt, my lipstick will fade, my shoes will slide off and I’ll slump on the front porch, no longer concerned about posture or rumpled clothes. What if Spring is so late that by the time it shows up, all apologies and crocuses, I’ve lost my bouncing happy interest?
So I’m looking out my window at the horizon, begging the sunshine to come burn away these malignant traces of dour grey winter. Begging that crisp breeze to drag smiles out of people that have been frowning for too long. Yes, okay, perhaps I’m giving a mere season too much credit. Surely, perhaps people have problems in spring, and perhaps the world isn’t suddenly perfect when the ground thaws. But right now, I’m digging into the cold hard earth and dropping all of my hope in, hoping for a fresh start for everyone when it blooms. Right now, as far as panaceas go, I can’t think of a cure better than a fresh crop of tulips in my parents’ yard, feeling the grass between my bare feet in Central Park, and that first day that an iced coffee is just what I need to match the sun’s triumphant return.
So there. I’m standing firm – I’ll stop complaining about winter right about the time it gets the hell out of my life. Bring it ON, Spring.

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