Spring is Right Around the New York Corner

As I was trudging out to work this morning, I noticed something different in the air. It is warmer today—noticeably warmer than it’s been lately. And when I passed by the bodega on the corner, the 8 am sunshine illuminated the tulips on display outside, and I thought of spring for the first time since last year—sunlight and Easter eggs and small green leaves on the skinny brown tree branches in Central Park, and I felt my whole body sigh with relief. Spring.

Standing on the corner in that gorgeous sunlight, I was seized with the urge to shirk my better judgment, to shake my hair out of my itchy cap, to peel off my gloves.

Then a speeding cab threw a horrible wave of black slush onto the curb right at my feet, and I remembered the sleet from last week, the terrible cold I’ve not quite gotten over, the fact that it’s only February 20th. So I pulled my scarf a little more tightly around my neck and hunkered down a little deeper in my wool coat. I gave the tulips one last loving glance, sidestepped an icy puddle, picked my way over a frozen snowdrift at the crosswalk on 69th Street, and continued down the long, icy avenue toward spring.