Is it Spring yet?

Saturday, March 22, 2014

I always get ill this time of year: turn back the clocks, change the smoke detector batteries and break out the cold pills.

It’s not allergies; it’s wear and tear.

The pattern is always the same: I suddenly lose energy doing small projects such as trimming the tree out front of my house.

I’m so exhausted, I flop down in bed and think, “Man, I must be getting old.”

While this is in fact truth these days, I felt the same at 25 doing similar chores.

Cold’s sneak up on me in this cat and mouse game in which I am always the mouse, and I always fall for cold’s simplest tricks, presuming that I simply need more sleep.

By the time the real symptoms emerge, I have already concluded I’m on death’s door and made out my final will and testament.

This reflects the inside and outside of the change of season, when I struggle to break through the last crust of ice to that region of warmth I’ve craved for since first frost in the fall.

This is a right of passage.

I remember moving into my apartment in Passaic on March 1, 1978, a cold water flat that had me huddling around a gas heater and wondering what the hell I had gotten myself into – a long month that dragged on me until spring finally sprung.

This year, winter clung on with all its claws, dragging me down, leaving wounds on my back that won’t heal fully until summer.

With drizzle predicted this morning along with near 60 degree temperatures, I assume, but do not take for granted, that I have managed to pluck off the last claw and can make my way into a warmer world, sniffling with the aftermath of illness that clings less rigidly.

It is not the pills that cure this ache inside and out of me, but the realization that I have survived yet another winter to witness another spring. For this, I am extremely grateful.