Reluctant spring

Our 2015 Ottawa spring has been reluctant indeed.

This past weekend we—at long last—enjoyed a warm, beer-on-the-front-porch kind of day. For the entire month of March and the first days of April, it felt like such days would never come. We sat in the sun and said, “Finally, spring is here.”

When I walk to the bus stop in the mornings now, birds sing. One cardinal calls out, and a cardinal friend responds. Smaller birds twitter. I imagine they are singing, “Finally, spring is here.”

Last night, we Canadians watched another of the sure signs of spring: the home opener of the Toronto Blue Jays. Like Charlie Brown, we have been lying with eyes open, tossing and turning, waiting. Like Charlie Brown, we know that when the day dawns baseball, finally, spring is here.

Our city has shrugged off its sluggish blanket of snow, awoken the birds and dawned baseball.

Finally.

(I give credit for the title of this post to Lee Ann Eckhardt Smith who used the phrase in a writing piece she completed at a workshop on the weekend.)

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