It's Hard To Hold A Candle In The Sweet...May?...Rain

Man, not to be all obvious or anything, but I LOVE SPRING. I feel like people who are really into ice cream, or who love friends, or shiny money. It's pretty much a "duh" situation.

One of the best and worst parts of living in a Canadian city is the endless, interminable winters. Worst: because how many people really love terrible weather? Best: nonstop conversations about how tough we are for putting up with it. (Plus, sledding.) Southern Ontario is lucky, because we get a real fall, and a real spring, and a real winter. Our summers are about 45 degrees Celsius and kill people, and our winters are the opposite (minus 45 degrees...Celsius) and, you know...kill people! But man! Spring! Fall! Delight.

My favourite part of seasons are the two or three weeks where things are in flux: the first snowfall, the buds on the trees, the first few evenings of sweater weather, and so on. Slogging through the snow in March, just hoping you get run over by a snowplow in order to end it all...that's not inspiring. Neither are the Days Of Endless Suffering in August, when couples get divorced just so no one has to touch each other in bed. If we could cycle though the seasons 16 times a year instead of four, that would be radical. Alas, rotation of the Earth! It's just not meant to be.

I'm writing on the first rainy day of spring; sitting outside sans jacket wasn't going to kill me. I'm wearing a minidress and flip-flops, and the jacketless existence didn't mean forty-five trips to the bathroom to warm my feet under the hand-dryer (which is fun, but not socially appropriate in a place that serves $17 beers). Spring is a promise that summer, that long-lost Canadian child, is fast returning; we forget that summer also brings with it heatstroke, dehydration, terrible bike-seat-related sweatiness, and sausage fingers.

Spring is summer's mellower, more awesome sibling: spring brings us flowers and occasionally showers with us. Summer gives us a rash. Summer? Pfft. Spring is falling in love, rediscovering ice cream, beers on the deck, hot showers in warm houses, the start of action movie season, season finales on TV, good hair, prom, getting to choose between tea and iced tea, and tans. It's flux, it's rebirth. It's awesome. And in Toronto, it's a lot of girls in plaid shirts with Keds. I'll take the good with the bad, I guess.