Fool's Spring

Not quite spring, but also not quite winter

A recent transplant to Chicago, I’m still figuring out how to ride the waves of the city’s temperamental weather. Yesterday was 74°, but next week will be 40°. New grass has started poking it’s little heads through the barely unthawed earth, but you’d only notice if you look closely. The more prominent yellowish, dead grass of last year makes me homesick in a way that feels significant. It’s a false spring, a fool’s spring. But it’s a spring nevertheless, and I’m feeling restless.

Spring finds me taking a Google Maps Streetview hike around the neighborhood where I grew up. I take the road from my house to the river and then the park and then the house of the boy I used to have a crush on. I would ride my bike past his house obsessively, some false hope fantasy running through my mind of him coming outside and professing his love for me. With my thumb and forefinger, I zoom into the windows and wonder if he ever saw me making my rounds and thought it was odd. I think about how many hopeless crushes I’d had in childhood and wonder why they all felt like I was trying to convince another person I was worth paying attention to.

Spring finds me checking my ex-boyfriend’s Spotify playlists to see if he still listens to any songs he found from me. I scroll until I find the small green circles that indicate songs I have saved to my own library, although I don’t think any of the songs are ones that would make him think of me. It’s funny to recall that this is how our relationship began, with me checking his Spotify almost daily to see when he’d delete the playlist he made for his girlfriend before me. It’s an odd, full circle moment. Such a strangely intimate, strangely lonely activity to perform, almost like I’ve entered a place I’m no longer welcome in through the back door that leads to a storage room. I hang out in the storage room for a minute, then head out. Nostalgia is a powerful force.

Spring finds me cleaning my room. Finally, folding clothes and opening mail (not all of it, of course, but definitely some of it). I tell myself that this year I’ll be better, cleaner. I probably won’t but this season is about optimism, so I won’t give up on the dream just yet. I am better if just for a moment.

Spring finds me taking long, deep breaths so I can remember how it all smells. Being alive feels different lately, and I wonder if it’s the way the air smells that makes me feel that way. The warmer, thicker weather makes me want to open up as much of myself as possible, starting with my nasal passageways. I want to take those soft, sunny spring days and devour them whole, consume them until I become them. It’s hard to want to grab and hold onto something as intangible as a day.

Spring finds me listening to music I usually describe as “tender.” I find a home in songs where you can hear the sound of fingers picking and moving up and down the neck of the guitar. I usually favor electronic, dance-y, feel-good-all-the-time music, but spring really does find me slowing down from time to time and enjoying the melancholy crooning of bisexual indie musicians.

Spring finds me crying at a protest, yes, because it’s sad, but also because I’m on my period, and the thought of people coming together for a single, common belief is enough to make me want to cry again while writing this. Young people, old people, even children can walk together and chant together and although it doesn’t fix anything immediately, it does mean something. And sometimes you just really need something that means something.

It’s a fool’s spring.