Anticipation

The past week has been a rainy blustery sort of week which, for this time of year, is not all that unusual.
There was something about this past week though that reminded me of my childhood Marchs spent in Colorado. Perhaps it was the high wind or the sly promises of sun.
When I was little I looked forward to spring the way many small children looked forward to Christmas. I hated being cold. I also hated the lack of any discernable color. Winters in Colorado are ugly. Don't let anyone sell you a picture postcard full of gentle white mounds of snow and lacy snowflakes floating down. The reality is that we have thin dry snow, so no pretty lacy snowflakes, which melts quickly once the sun does come out. It also means slushy dirty streets, bare patches of dried dun colored grasses and bare spindly trees. Everywhere there is that ugly, nasty dun color, not a spot of color to be seen.
Every year though I knew that at the end of March, the beginning of April there would be a warm spell. I'd watch for it, my whole body quivering with the promise of warmth. When that warm spell hit (a warm spell being anything over 45 degrees) I'd run outside, sit on my front stoop and watch our Ash tree in the front yard start to bud with that wonderful chartreuse green that all young growth seems to have. I’d scour the ground in my mother’s flower bed to get the first glimpse of grape hyacinth. I'd sit there until my mother hollered at me to come in and put on a jacket before I caught my death of a cold but still I'd sit until the stoop began to cool as the sun moved on its way.
As an adult, living in Northern California, I don't get to have that heightened sense of anticipation, that sense that something is going to change , that there is going to be a little magic in the air. There is always color here even on the greyest day. Like the child who knows Santa isn't real, the exquisiteness of the anticipation is gone. Don't get me wrong, I still tear into my present of sunshine as I watch the daffodils and freesia come up but with just a hint of jadedness as I sit on my front stoop and that's too bad.