when the world is puddle-wonderful

Yesterday was the first day of spring. I like spring. Which is, I suppose, nothing unusual. Everybody likes spring. What with the daffodils and tulips and morning dew and Easter Creme Eggs (sorry, Cadbury Creme Eggs) and bunnies and all.

But I don’t get completely blown over by spring. I’m not really a bunny person, and although I think that the flowers are pretty, I really don’t get moved by morning dew. Don’t get me wrong, I think bunnies are cute. I just don’t think they sell a season, is all. There’s better marketing in the Creme Eggs.

Spring is mostly for children. It’s playing in mud and splashing in puddles and delighting in bunnies and chicks and ducklings and Easter egg coloring contests. The enjoyment that adults derive from spring is, I think, largely nostalgic (oh the memories of splashing through puddles or hunting for chocolate eggs in the wet grass!) or vicarious (oh the look of delight on the face of a child who has found a shiny foil-wrapped egg!). But there’s another layer to this enjoyment – the feeling of relief. Relief at having made it through another winter. Relief that the days are getting longer and brighter. Relief that summer is around the corner. Relief at being able to step outside and take big gulps of warm, sweet air. At feeling that air on your skin.

That’s how spring has felt to me, anyway, since I passed the age of puddle-splashing. (OK, so maybe I’ve splashed a few puddles in my adulthood. But just a few. And I always felt a little bit embarrassed.) But this year is different: this year, there is Baby.

And I cannot wait to take Baby outside and lay on a blanket on the grass and watch her feel and smell and hear the earth in springtime. She was born in November, so her only experience of the outside world has been filtered through layers of wool and fleece. She’s only really seen the world through windows, only felt stray gusts of cold air while wrapped and covered in her stoller or pressed firmly against my chest. She’s never seen a flower grow straight up from the ground; never heard a bird chirp, never felt the grass or the dirt or the rain. That she will, soon, see flowers, hear birds and feel the grass, the dirt and the rain thrills me beyond measure.

I may even splash in a puddle to celebrate.

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From the Not All Bunnies Are Cute files:

Let's call him P. Bunny

This one's just creepy. The pimp suit, the mustache-instead-of-whiskers, the boob-like eggs, the cracked-out look in his eyes. It's just wrong.