It's the end of rent-a-movie weather

I noticed it, too, this morning, when my circadian rhythm woke me an hour early so I could turn on the heater and crawl back into bed. I noticed it in the quality of the light, which was less night-like, and in the quality of the cold in my apartment, which was less bitter.

I intentionally avoided wearing long johns for the first time in as long as I can remember, and I abandoned my warm and dry, calf-high Sorrels for the adventurous soles of my hiking shoes, which had been gathering dust since my trip south at Christmas. Leaving my apartment, it felt warmer outside than in the shaded genkan, and in the full sun I read the same spring that you had—in the drips of snow and the smokey smell of the melt. I cued up “Heartbeats” on the ol iPod as it seemed fitting for this world that is slowly coming back to life.

The children are thawing out, too. If being at an elementary school is the best way to spend a Friday, then the walk to school is the best start to that day. I always pass so many students on the trudge up the hill, and I like to genkily scream the wonder of the day at them in English as they respond with teeth-chattering “bikurishita!”s. Today they screamed it right back at me, and a roku nensei dragged me into some kind of break-neck race up the hill, terrorizing all the little giggling girls we passed with our cries of “GOOD MORNING!”

And in the elementary entranceway, the perfect punctuation to your statement that spring has sprung. The concrete and cobbles are dry; the recessed area is free of rubbers and snowmobiling boots: the more sensible shoes that this first day of spring allows fitting conveniently into our matrix of shoe lockers.