The Joys of Spring

Winter is long in Indiana, and I mean looooooong.  It starts off right after Halloween with the skies becoming  gray and the days shortening to where you can easily miss daylight if your commute gets you on the road before 8 am and brings you home after 6 pm.  But there is Thanksgiving to look forward to and the novelty of wearing warm sweaters, wooly socks, and soft scarves.  Then we are into December.  The cold is ever-present but we are too busy with holidays festivities to notice. Baking for teachers, shopping, decorating our homes, playing Christmas carols.  It is a joyful time and the weather seems to be a perfect accessory.  Sledding and hot chocolate, holiday lights and warm blankets, Salvation Army ringers and fires blazing in our family rooms.  Then January arrives.  Thud.  No more holiday anticipation, no more gift exchanges, winter break from school is over.  Oh, yes, and the bills arrive.  Somehow now we don't quite recall why it was so important to give a Panera gift card to our pet sitter.  Winter persists and our spirits search for something to grasp onto.  Here in Indianapolis it is often the Colts in the playoffs; fingers crossed they make it to the Super Bowl.  We wear our Colts blue, and live for Sunday games, but curse under our breath as we slip and slide our way to work, church, and the grocery on slick roads.  Ah, February, the cruelest month of all.  It may be short on days but it is long on misery.  By this point we are fed up with the sooty fireplace, the boots piled up in the foyer dripping sludge, the heating bills, the cabin fever.  Yes, there is Valentines Day but there is not enough chocolate and flowers in the world to make us forget the winter misery.  I see March as a tease.  Yes, there might be a day where the temperature reaches the 50's and we begin to see some buds on the trees, but just as we begin to consider ending hibernation, a snowstorm can arrive, and it is as if we are being mocked for false hopes.  As April arrives, we don't look back.  Some days are warm, others feel like we are sliding back towards winter.  But we know we are through the worst of it and we rejoice in spring break plans, Easter bunnies, and calendar countdowns  to the end of the school year.  In the dead of winter we cannot imagine that it will ever be warm again.  That our trees will be green with leaves, that we will see our daffodils and tulips push up through the hardened soil.  But spring always comes, and it is a joyful time for us in Indiana who have survived yet another bleak winter.  We mulch our gardens and tune up our lawnmowers, plant colorful annuals and uncover the barbecue.  Spring in Indiana, it is a miracle, year after year.