You know it’s finally spring when you rip the weather stripping from around your draughty window and throw it wide open – to hell with worrying about masked criminals and crazed hobos crawling through it cuz you live on the ground floor. I tell you there’s nothing like sleeping in a bedroom with crisp fresh (fresh-ish) air circling your bed and filling your lungs, bringing with it smells of newly-cut grass and the sounds of the alley folk clanking their carts outside.
*sigh*
Nothing changes my mood and general outlook on life like a warm, sunny spring day after months of monotonous grey drizzle, being perpetually wet, drying your jeans over an electric heater and putting on shoes still damp four days after walking home from the grocery store through two feet-deep puddles (they’re unavoidable. I’d have to walk with the traffic to deke out those stupid puddles). The winter, with its heavy weather and heavier comfort food, 4 p.m. nightfalls that don’t inspire you to leave your apartment to get any sort of exercise, makes me physically, mentally and emotionally lethargic, my days spent grumpily going about my business, and my evenings hidden under piles of heavy blankets in my freezing cold apartment, sarcastically mocking TV and trudging about with utter disdain for life.
All it takes is a lift in the clouds for all that to change, for my apartment to go from a prison-like cave to a delightful abode, the pitiful state of my bank account from a horrible obsession to a laughable situation. From putting my head down and scuttling from one place to the next, cursing the cold, needle-like rain, to walking immense distances and delighting in every sight, sound and smell.
I drove home from UBC the other day along Marine Drive to dig the view, my windows rolled down, my Ben Harper/Shins mix blasting, and couldn’t believe the incredible beauty of Spanish Banks, the choppy water dotted with white sail boats and brave windsurfers, the snow-capped mountains against a crisp, blue backdrop of sky, the shimmering downtown skyline, the infinite kites and bike riders and joggers and loping dogs. It's as if I'd never seen that sight before. Clouds have never been whiter, the water never bluer, the trees never greener and more pine-fresh and fragrant. I drove behind a train of cars going 30 km/hr, which typically would have put me in an apoplectic road rage, but which suddenly made me… happy, because what’s the rush when you’re driving along Marine Drive on a sunny Friday afternoon with Ben Harper and the birds singing in unison for no one else but you?
And I started thinking: there’s REALLY nothing as glorious and LIFE CHANGING as having the rain clouds lift after six hideous months, to reveal this beautiful scenery previously hidden behind a curtain of grey and drizzle. To make me remember why I live where I live (my grandmother constantly asking me: “Why do you live in Vancouver?” and me never being able to articulate WHY. This is why!). And in a funny sort of way the rain serves a good purpose, in that it makes us appreciate the blooming tulips and bright blue sky even more when the nearly forgotten sun finally comes back from its winter vacation.
It hit home even more today, walking home from a downtown Workology interview over the Burrard Street bridge and through Kits. As I hit the woods on the south side of the bridge I was suddenly overwhelmed by the scent of this grass, or maybe it’s a tree or a plant. Every spring I smell it and every spring it whisks me immediately back to childhood Fort St. John summers. Nothing transports me back to that specific time so suddenly and so overwhelmingly like that smell (and the smell of deet) – to day trips to the lake where the bottom was so rocky I had to swim with my tennis shoes on, where I had perpetually skinned knees and sunburned cheeks, where I lived off hot dogs (in the days before I liked ketchup – so they were plain in a bun) and jiggly heart-shaped jello pieces and Allen’s apple juice in tetra paks.
A few blocks down the street and I was walking under whirling cherry blossom pedals which transported me 20 years down the road, to hanami parties in Japan, playing badminton under the cherry trees in full bloom (like balls of cotton candy) and drinking Asahi tall boys on blue tarps, getting home as the sun set for a frozen pizza dinner and hour-long nap, only to wake up again at 10 p.m. and head out to an izakaya or random house party or all-you-can-drink roof top gong show, riding my bike home at 3 a.m., swerving around drunken salary men while marveling at the enormousness of the full moon and thinking (as I only seemed to think when I was drunk or stoned or perhaps on a road trip to Kyoto or Tokyo): Holy CRAP – I live in JAPAN. And waking up the next morning with nothing else to do but watch Zoolander for the 200th time, laying around in pyjamas on a tatami floor with the patio doors swung open wide, shooing away pigeons and drinking tea.
In a single Vancouver walk home it’s possible to re-live an entire lifetime, lived all over the province, country and world, through all these triggers that link each event and life stage like a paper chain, so that 27 years are summed up in 60 minutes, 40 blocks, ten songs on your Ipod, the entirety of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. From the smells of fresh cut grass and memories of childhood soccer games, juice from orange slices(which I avoided) dripping down tanned arms and running away from June bugs, to smells of barbeques and memories of Canada Day bike rides through Thornhill’s meandering ravines. All these thoughts coming at once, overlapping and switching from one to the next in unannounced bursts, as if springtime shakes the cobwebs and woolen blankets and rain clouds from my winter-heavy, hibernating mind and brings it – and me – back to life.
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