Spring has arrived — quietly, sneakily, like a cat slipping through a screen door.
One minute, you’re scraping frost off your windshield. The next, you’re wondering if your neighbor has lost his mind mowing the lawn at 7 a.m. (again).
First, a side note on cats. My mom loved her cats. I liked them, or at least grew to like them. As a child, I was also afraid of them. I became scared of them after one I was reaching out to pet jumped on my head and proceeded to scratch the “you know what” out of me. I just remember being in intense pain as fur was flying. I got an infection from that darn cat. I was about 3.
It’s funny how early memories of events like these stick with us. This may have brought up memories of your own encounters, or maybe not.
Anyway, back to spring.
Spring is a trickster. One day it’s warm and sunny, and the next it’s sleeting sideways while you stand outside in sandals (in socks of course, a common PNW thing) feeling personally betrayed.
But I love it anyway. Not just for the longer days or the smell of fresh soil, but because spring is nature’s way of saying, “Relax. I’ve still got a few surprises.”
Everything suddenly starts to come alive. Trees that looked like they’d given up sprout new buds like they just remembered who they were. Birds sing like they’re auditioning for a Broadway show, and flowers — well, flowers steal the spotlight.
My mom’s favorite flowers were her peonies. Every spring, without fail, she’d inspect them daily, like a general surveying her troops.
“They’re almost ready,” she’d say, as if their blooming was a matter of national importance.
And when they finally opened — huge, ruffled and unapologetically pink — she’d beam like she’d grown them with sheer willpower. I swear she loved those peonies more than most people (well maybe not, but it seemed like it).
Spring was also a time my mom would sign us up (me and my three sisters) for swimming lessons at the local pool. You see, in those days, every child went to the local pool. It was where our friends were, all the moms, and some dads were. The pool was open late spring into early September. Sometimes longer, depending on the weather.
In Colorado, we had a saying: “If you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes, because it’s going change.”
Mom would say, “You never know when swimming might save your life.”
She was right, of course.
So me, my sisters and our friends learned to float on our backs, to do the backstroke and swim. I never could totally get the breathing from your side while swimming thing, but I did OK. After lessons, we’d just play around for hours.
We all know too well, of course, with all this life bursting comes the unspoken cost of spring: allergies. Pollen is nature’s glitter. It’s beautiful at a distance and somehow ends up in your sinuses, your car and your coffee. You sneeze, your dog sneezes your cat sneezes, and somewhere a tree laughs.
But maybe that’s part of spring’s message. It’s not perfect. It’s unpredictable, messy, occasionally sneezy — but it’s alive and beautiful. Spring reminds that new beginnings are possible. Who doesn’t like new beginnings? I’ve said in past columns that, “You can always begin again.”
Spring reminds us to laugh, to hope and to go outside and enjoy the wonders of new beginnings (even if we must bring tissues).
So, here’s to spring — to open windows, muddy boots, mom’s peonies, swimming lessons and the yearly ritual of wondering if that’s a bird singing or your car alarm going off. (I do love the return of Robins-but they are loud!)
Either way, something's waking up — and maybe it’s you.
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Richard Stride is the current CEO of Cascade Community Healthcare.
