Spring Is (Almost) Here

More things we like

In past years, dreary January and February have seemed interminable. This year, even weeks ago it seemed that spring was not too far away—not just around the corner, but close enough. Has time sped up because I am older now and watching the Critter grow so quickly? Have I simply become more patient with the long nights and the cold? Is it because of the extension of Daylight Savings Time, now just two weeks away?

However close it may seem, spring is certainly not yet here—barely 30°F during my run this morning. Nevertheless, we've added Spring Is Here by Taro Gomi (of Everyone Poops fame) to our repertoire of bedtime books for the Critter. Its simple, lyric text and illustrations render the changing seasons, beginning with the birth of a calf. It is a perfect picture book, and I tend to order it in bulk so that I have copies to give to friends when they have children.

I have been known to tear up at the conclusion of the book, when, with the return of spring, "The calf has grown." But these days—perhaps because it is winter?—my favorite is the picture of four children dancing and sledding in the snow. "The snow falls," reads the text, "The children play."

Simple as it is, this part of the book stirs my sense of the incomprehensible vastness of things. There is a time when you are one of the children playing in the snow. Then perhaps the time comes when one of the children playing in the snow is yours, or, later, your child's child. Other times, the children are your neighbors', or your friends'.... There is your life: your childhood, your child, your grandchildren. And there is simply life: year after year, children playing in the snow.