SPRING

SPRING

Tearing home from school my spirits and adrenalin bouyed by the balmy breezes of May, I knew this was exactly the right time to say it. Not tomorrow, not yesterday, but today. "Mamma can I change into my shorts?" was my clarion call that harkened in the new season. The vernal equinox, a time for total change from the short, grey days to long hours of freedom, rose bushes, lilacs and playing outside after dinner.
The transformation was complete, not just a cleansing of the spirit but of the house as well. Rugs were rolled up and beaten to death by hand. Splipcovers – I can still smell and feel the garish flowered fabric – dresssed all the plush furniture, prompting my brother,s annual quip, "So, when do they come off? When the Queeen comes to visit?" The biggest change was in to the diet. There were berries with sour cream, blueberries, strawberries, raspberries. Everything was drowning in sour cream. So rich and sweet. They don't make it like that anymore. O, where is the sour cream of yesteryear!.And there was that inimitable borscht that my mother used to make with cucumbers, cold potatoes and, of course, sour cream

The games we played in May were diffferent from our indoor pastimes. I can still smell the lilacs and see the irises and hollyhocks. (A friend who is much more botanically aware then I tells me that this is a false memory, that hollyhocks bloom in the fall not the spring. Memory is a powerful force; and I often wonder if we remember actual events or our last memory of those events. At any rate, my playtime memories will always feature hollyhocks.) And did we play! Tag through all the backyards under canopioes of oak and maple trees, One game was called "Sailing around the Rock of Gibralter."I had a chance to see this backyard Gibralter recently, and it is all of four feet square. One of my favorite games was called "Hospital."Not only were all the dolls patients, but my ten-year-old Tom Cat,a victim of Stokholm syndrome, allowed us to strap him into a carriage with his paws and tail swaddled in bandages.Not only was he willing but he licked us in gratitude
The only thing that drove us indoors were the radio programs. There was "Jack Armstrong, All American Boy," "Tom Mix" and, of course, "Little Orphan Annie," responsible for all the unused packages of Ovaltine on the shelves sent for because a Little Orphan Annie decoder badge was the premium.

Whose the little chatterbox
The one with pretty auburn locks.
Who could it be?
It's Little Orphan Annie.

She and Sandy make a pair
They never seem to have a care
Cute little, she
It's Little Orphan Annie
Arf! Arf!

The most astonishing thing about childhood summers is how long they lasted. Long, lazy and – toward September – languishing. Today, I never languish. I loll and linger and join my ancestral chorus lamenting, "O how quickly the days fly by."