On a day like today, life is waking up. With the marvelous blustery wind kissing our faces, we’re reminded of our summer selves. We come back to life and back outside, prowling the city sidewalks in hope of a warm raindrop on the face, or the glimpse of an opening crocus. All of life is singing a chorus of living – and it is wonderful to be alive, and here in New England.
Almost all of the charm of living here is wrapped up in today’s wind – in its hope, its promise of summer, its reminder that the cycles are about to move again – just when we were beginning to think we’d lost them forever.
It is plain, and yet still amazing, to see and feel for oneself how much sway nature holds over us. Over our moods, the hours we keep, our dress, our manner with each other, and whether or not we drive with the windows down. It’s such a liberating thing to do after a winter encased completely in glass. You wouldn’t think it – but it’s transformative. It always has been, for me. And I’m suddenly in high school again, singing along to, I don’t know, Dave Mathews Band or Mambo #5 (remember that? what an awful song) and sneaking cigarettes between ballet and home.
I don’t smoke anymore, thank God, and I don’t want to; but still the feeling of sticking my naked hand out the car window and feeling the air go over it, and not freeze it, is like nothing else in the world.
It’s my hometown, and my first car (a navy ‘88 Volvo 250 GL named Stella), and every spring break, and summers in Maine, and sleeping outdoors – spring is coming of age all over again.
I have no desire to relive my teen years. I’m nostalgic about certain things, but the fact remains that a lot of the experience, at the time, was nothing short of brutal. Even so – nothing compares to the memories of catching fireflies on my high school’s baseball diamond at four in the morning with my best friend – and, well, I just don’t do stuff like that anymore. For starters, I don’t even know where the nearest baseball diamond is. And wandering around the streets of the city in your pajamas at four a.m. is a lot creepier than giggling down a couple of hushed country blocks at thirteen. Too bad, really.
It’s these kind of harmless and vaguely stupid things that I miss. I have a distinct feeling that, eleven years from now, if I happen to catch my niece (who is now two) sneaking back into the house after a few hours of bug-catching, half-naked gallivanting, I won’t kick back and tell her, “Yeah, I used to do that, too. Ah, the days!” I more imagine myself saying something like, “Good way to get grounded.” Not because I’m into being tyrannical – it’s just, well, she’s two. And a tiny two. She’s tiny, and precious, and the thought of her being out without some tenaciously protective relative like myself in the middle of the night makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck. Of course, my mother would have reacted the same way if she knew about my teenage nocturnal wanderlust. Cuz that’s how the adults are. And I suppose I am one now. (If not now, when?)
So yes, I feel a bit of a pang thinking of those sillier days running barefoot down my street with eight other girls under a full moon. Or night-swimming (my generation takes REM’s advice very seriously) in some pond.
(There are stupider and funnier stories, but I’ll leave it at that, in the interest of my dignity.)
The real power of the emerging spring is in reminding us of glories past. The fact that they’re returning makes the memories more vivid and more delectable for our minds…I can’t speak for the rest of you, but my enjoyment is wrapped up in also planning all of the warm things I’ll do this year – picnics, hikes, reading poetry under a blooming tree, walking through the grass barefoot, wearing sandals, preferably a walk in the warm rain at some point with a good friend to discuss the meaning of life, frisbee, soccer, iced drinks, the condensation on the outside of said drinks, fruit pies, and sleeping with the windows wide open. I’m planning on all of these and more. Perhaps it’s more powerful this year because I missed last spring encased in Cairo’s fine dust. God knows best.
And while I’m planning, I’m reminded also of things I miss and can’t have back. I’m going to be honest with you: I miss the nineties a great deal. It might be unfair of me – I can’t have been all that involved. After all, I was a green seventeen when we rang in the new millennium, so the early nineties were admittedly a bit of a blip. But I believe we’ve lost some of the natural, earthy charm of the nineties – spring’s dirty smell is a bittersweet reminder that not everything is controlled by the human race, and I think we were better at accepting that ten years ago. I’m willing to allow that it might be my nostalgic fancy altogether, but I don’t think it is.
Remember when our heroes were Ben Harper, Eddie Vedder, and Janeane Garofalo? Remember when a pleasantly plump, philosophically-minded Ethan Hawke was the heartthrob? I mean, way back when, before anyone ever thought you needed to bring sexy back? When sexy was not antithetical to slightly worn clothes and something other than a six-pack? Man I miss those days. I miss matte lipstick, and pajama-clad brownie fights that turned into love scenes. Now we’ve got perfectly-coiffed kisses even when they’re in the rain. Can’t someone’s mascara at least run? And what happened to grunge, and flannel, and Doc Martens? Remember when social activism wasn’t a popularity coin celebrities could cash in with the tabloids? (I’m sure some of them are sincere….I just think the mixing of the two is a little insidious.) Remember when everyone used Manic Panic? Dying your hair a really awful color used to be a right of passage. Now the fifteen-year-olds are better with makeup and hair irons than I am. I mean, everyone’s prettier – and maybe that’s great – but isn’t there room for a little bit more, a little bit different, a little punk? I miss the freedom of those days. I had frizzy hair that was occasionally different colors, and braces, and fairly awful tapered jeans, but at least I was comfortable being myself.
My own imperfect charm (real or imagined) is likewise wrapped up in that remarkable decade. I started out pleasantly buck-toothed, but by the end of the it I had a perfect smile – however fake. I was (still am, truth be told) missing a tooth up front. It was attached to my retainer after I got my braces off, and I used to “forget” it some days, just to flash my pirate smile at my friends. They would play-cringe and then marvel. My sister advised me to never have a permanent bridge made; now I have one, but it’s broken, giving me back that snaggle-toothed appeal (work with me). When her friend called me pretty, the same sister simply said, “Did you see her tooth?” We’ve been spoiled out of appreciating the irregular, the arresting, the unusual.
On a day like today, I miss that. I miss the variety – is it possible to say that I miss the counter-culture being popular? But I feel that the Parises of the world have taken over in a bleached, starved fury, and I miss it when the popular kids in school played “Angel from Montgomery” at the talent show and had green hair. I miss my own bleached-blonde stripe in the front of my hair (homemade, of course; a brassy yellow declaration of independence). I did it in the spring; no surprise there. I did it sunbathing with my sister in the secluded backyard. My parents hated it, but at least there was some variety.
But hope springs eternal. The flowers are about to come back, in all their sneeze-inducing, mutlicolored, variously-shaped glory, and we’re all more than ready for them. April rain will run our mascara, and soak the hems of our jeans, and leave us all soggily unattractive – even if the movies deny us the pleasure of a parallel reality. And after all, the fifties reigned in starched, stiff, regular beauty – and then the sixties came and tore down that unanimous empire. I’m not holding my breath – and I’m the first to admit that it ain’t all bad (hair products have certainly improved, to no one’s disappointment).
I’m just going to say this, then: here’s to the coming season, and greasy-haired leading men, and acoustic music. And while I’m at it, here’s to my missing pirate tooth. Yar. Take that, ye pretty ladies.
