I love that we get to have spring in Chicago this year. So many years it seems like the weather jumps right from winter into the sweltering heat of summer. Don't get me wrong, I like summer a lot, too. But spring and fall have always been my favorite seasons; I love the changes.
As long as it isn't too cold the smell and the sound and the feel of spring rain is just so refreshing. I used to love to play outside in the rain when I was a kid. Trees and flowers are coming back to life drinking in the rain and it's just so exciting and beautiful and alive to see color come back to the city after the long, gray winter.
Color comes back to the city in more ways than flowers and trees, too. The other day I was watching a river of colorful umbrellas parading down the sidewalks of Michigan Avenue on my way home from work. My contribution to the color parade is a red umbrella so bright I suspect it can be seen from space. As I was watching people and their umbrellas navigate the evening rush hour, it got me thinking. Why do people wait until spring to break out the umbrellas? We certainly have more than our share of snow here in Chicago (and in my prior homes of Minnesota and Wisconsin), and snow does melt and one can end up as cold and wet from snow as from rain. And yet I see umbrellas used in the winter months only very rarely.
Maybe umbrellas are like flowers - blooming only when the spring rains come back and the mercury pushes up above freezing; bringing color back to the streets as the rest of the city is waking up from a long winter rest. Maybe they are smart enough to hide in the back of the closet for the frozen months of the year because they are simply smarter than we are and understand that one should not leave the house when the temperature in Fahrenheit is a negative number. Or maybe I just need to anthropomorphize umbrellas a little less.
Either way, I'm enjoying the spring colors, be they housed in trees, flowers, grass, clothing, fresh paint, or the metal and waterproof fabric of a river of umbrellas.
