Spring Chatter, 2018

I'm already hearing it here and there--coffee shop, health club, grocery store: talk about where spring is. These conversations invariably then move to dour comments about, you know, "northeastern Ohio," the place where seasons, especially the pleasant ones, (a) are never born, (b) go to die.

Well, it's cold; some snow lingers in our yard; and--most damning--the calendar tells us it's not spring yet, not until Tuesday, March 20, at 3 p.m., at which time, I'm sure, the birdies will sing; the clouds will puff into pure white; the daffodils will come out, "fluttering and dancing in the breeze" (as Wordsworth put it in "I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud"*); the temperatures will rise abruptly into the 70s and remain there until next winter; "the rain will never fall till after sundown"--as King Arthur sings in Camelot. Etc.

Hah.

When I was in junior high and high school at the Hiram School (barely a half-hour from where we live now) I hated March and April in Ohio. I would sit upstairs in the old study hall and look to the west and see the dark clouds swelling and moving toward us, timed to arrive (a) at recess, (b) right after school (destroying baseball practice or a game), (c) right when ... I didn't want them to.

It had been a little worse in Oklahoma in my earlier boyhood: Sometimes the dark clouds vomited forth a funnel.

My annoyance didn't change when I got to college. There goes tennis practice, I would say as the ark-worthy rain would commence right at 4:00, our scheduled time for double-faulting.

Old Guys carry umbrellas. This is a principle I discovered when I became an Old Guy. And it's true: Even when the Weather Channel app tells me there's only a 10% chance of precip, I hoist my umbrella from its stand (yes, we have an umbrella stand) and head fearlessly out into the ... sunshine.

Sometimes people, seeing me on a sunny afternoon with an umbrella, will wax wise: Well, Dan, you're keeping the rain away--that sort of thing. Ha, ha.

I smile, certain that Poseidon will soon be swimming in our street. And I have occasionally seen him.

But grousing about spring in northeastern Ohio is like complaining about the smell of pizza in a pizzeria. It's where we are; it's what we experience here. And all we can do is wait--and wonder what on earth we're doing here.

*I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

By William Wordsworth

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine

And twinkle on the milky way,

They stretched in never-ending line

Along the margin of a bay:

Ten thousand saw I at a glance,

Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they

Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:

A poet could not but be gay,

In such a jocund company:

I gazed—and gazed—but little thought

What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.