The Expectant Season

Spring is an expectant season, with warming days that feel exhilarating after Winter’s cold, but also plenty of lingering chill to accompany the slow march toward blooms and leafy green trees.  It’s the only season that feels this way to me.

Summer is a season of lazy abundance.  There are hours of warmth and sunlight and days that feel happily endless, with enough unscheduled and unregulated time for me to feel that I may do as I please.  On the heels of the abundant warmth, Fall arrives with the calendar of school days .  As I settle into the routine of school, there are crisp, cool mornings that are a welcome development after summer’s heat.  Fall sometimes lingers but it never feels full of expectant promise.  This season of transition to Winter is about preparation:  coats, gloves, scarves, and hats are made ready.  Heavier quilts and blankets are set out.  Lost slippers are located.  Winter’s days are bracing and sunlight is on rations.  The icy cold and snowy days occupy my mind.  Winter demands attention; I don’t go outside without preparing for the cold.  

But Spring is the expectant season, sometimes warm enough to warrant a walk to the curb in flip flops, toes wriggling in the freedom.  Though I ardently wish for warmth and blooms to begin as soon as the calendar is marked “Spring” the transition is slow, with green and warmth doled out in small segments, a daffodil bloom here;  a crocus there.  

The transition from Winter’s stillness to a world of explosive blooms creeps along, not quite tentative as much as slow, deliberately taking hold of the plants and trees in my care and preparing for Summer.

Soon enough, the blooming and blossoming will explode and cover every surface.  But until we make that splendid transition, I look carefully for the evidence of progress, anticipating the glory that will soon consume the outdoor world in blooms and growth.