Thawing...Again

There is nothing like a stint of rewinter to make a beautiful, warm, sunny day especially great. We had gotten lulled into a false sense of spring, expecting the days to keep being lovely even though the same thing happens to us Montrealers every year. One last dump of snow to humble us and torture the tulips. This morning it is one of those post snowpocalyptic, melty, warm mornings that I want to spend all day in, just me, the dogs, the cat, the sunshine, and my ratty bathrobe which is getting ceremoniously chucked when the baby's born...maybe I'll plant it in honour of spring.

I realized over the last few days of bombardment with weather that we are very much animals. Watching the behaviour of all my people shift from "lalala spring, everyone is slightly under-dressed for the chill, smiley, gooey, optimism" to "ugh, groan, hunch my back and wear a f***ing parka, winter blues" was kind of like watching a flock of birds swoop and change course as one unit (I am afraid of large numbers of birds swooping, so I have only witnessed this phenomenon on the National Geographic Channel). Now here we creatures of Montreal are on this beautiful morning, in our various warrens and dens (yes, mixing animal metaphors is okay) not yet aware of one another, but already back to the "lalala spring" bit swooshing 180 degrees towards "spring-it's-almost-summer-I-can-taste-the-barbecue-already", soggy boots and slush a distant memory.

Soon enough we fickle citizens will be complaining about how hot it is, how buggy it is, how burnt we got over the weekend, and we will have forgotten the sweet early spring days where the flowers and new tree leaves struggled to get through the last snows. Where everything kind of smells like poo, but not in such a bad way, and especially the feeling that the long sleepy winter is really really over, for real this time...probably.

Happy spring.