Mota Boy
12-14-2006, 03:50 PM
Today I saw the first robin of winter, and I thought of Calvin.
I remember, as a kid, seeing the spike-haired ADD poster child, wide-eyed with excitement, rushing up to his mother to announce that he’d just witnessed the first robin of spring. “Call the newspapers!”, he shouts, “They’ll probably want an interview! Do you think it will make the front page?” He’s full of the raw excitement of discovery, of being the first to witness some monumental event. Spring is returning. For months, the icy grip of winter has smothered the world, leaving it cold and dark and dead. But now? A-ha! The old bastard is growing weak! Small signs of light and warmth and life are sneaking through his gnarled fingers and bringing back substance to a world once blanketed in an endless white. Life has triumphed over death! The robin is back!
And yet, as left my exam this December afternoon, I walked into a blue sky and warm clime. And there, right smack in the middle of the path was none other than a robin, head cocked, observing curiously my bewilderment. Even more disorienting, he was not merely some lone wayward wanderer. Behind him a dozen more hopped and chirped about, enthusiastically pecking the earth for worms. It’s just not right, I say.
Look, I’ll be the first to admit that I like warm weather. Summer is my favorite season, only preceded by spring, as its harbinger. Fall is next for its residual summer effects. I have a strong distaste for winter. I love warm weather. I love the cool of the evening twilight and the excuses to be outside. Even on hot, muggy days the outdoors still beckons. Cooped up inside with the air conditioner blowing feels far too unnatural, and the thick air beyond calls my name. I love warm weather. I adore the spring.
But not like this. No, not like this. Not this cruel seasonal farce. Not robins hopping around upon dead grass beneath bare branches. Not shadows growing long at noon. Not watching buds germinate along dead branches only to be killed off by next week’s frost. Not heat that makes you shed your Santa hat. I love summer, but I want to earn it.
The barbecues and outdoor concerts and fresh invasion of life into the world that accompany summer are what makes life worth living, but they haul with them blast-furnace weeks that send you scurring for cover during the workday and hoards of insects that bite and nip and gnaw and pester. More importantly, the warm months are so wonderful precisely because they're fleeting. Christmas would lose all meaning were it held once a week, and by the time August roles around the splendid, endless sunsets and barefoot walks on fresh grass have been diluted by months of the same. It needs to be stolen from us by the onset of autumn so that we can miss it. So that we may yearn for it. So that six months later we are sent scrambling to the highest peak to shout word of its imminent return. “Call NBC! Call the fire department! Call dad! Spring is on its way!”
How are we to know the excitement of reacquainting ourselves with an old friend if he never left in the first place?
I remember, as a kid, seeing the spike-haired ADD poster child, wide-eyed with excitement, rushing up to his mother to announce that he’d just witnessed the first robin of spring. “Call the newspapers!”, he shouts, “They’ll probably want an interview! Do you think it will make the front page?” He’s full of the raw excitement of discovery, of being the first to witness some monumental event. Spring is returning. For months, the icy grip of winter has smothered the world, leaving it cold and dark and dead. But now? A-ha! The old bastard is growing weak! Small signs of light and warmth and life are sneaking through his gnarled fingers and bringing back substance to a world once blanketed in an endless white. Life has triumphed over death! The robin is back!
And yet, as left my exam this December afternoon, I walked into a blue sky and warm clime. And there, right smack in the middle of the path was none other than a robin, head cocked, observing curiously my bewilderment. Even more disorienting, he was not merely some lone wayward wanderer. Behind him a dozen more hopped and chirped about, enthusiastically pecking the earth for worms. It’s just not right, I say.
Look, I’ll be the first to admit that I like warm weather. Summer is my favorite season, only preceded by spring, as its harbinger. Fall is next for its residual summer effects. I have a strong distaste for winter. I love warm weather. I love the cool of the evening twilight and the excuses to be outside. Even on hot, muggy days the outdoors still beckons. Cooped up inside with the air conditioner blowing feels far too unnatural, and the thick air beyond calls my name. I love warm weather. I adore the spring.
But not like this. No, not like this. Not this cruel seasonal farce. Not robins hopping around upon dead grass beneath bare branches. Not shadows growing long at noon. Not watching buds germinate along dead branches only to be killed off by next week’s frost. Not heat that makes you shed your Santa hat. I love summer, but I want to earn it.
The barbecues and outdoor concerts and fresh invasion of life into the world that accompany summer are what makes life worth living, but they haul with them blast-furnace weeks that send you scurring for cover during the workday and hoards of insects that bite and nip and gnaw and pester. More importantly, the warm months are so wonderful precisely because they're fleeting. Christmas would lose all meaning were it held once a week, and by the time August roles around the splendid, endless sunsets and barefoot walks on fresh grass have been diluted by months of the same. It needs to be stolen from us by the onset of autumn so that we can miss it. So that we may yearn for it. So that six months later we are sent scrambling to the highest peak to shout word of its imminent return. “Call NBC! Call the fire department! Call dad! Spring is on its way!”
How are we to know the excitement of reacquainting ourselves with an old friend if he never left in the first place?