Seasons

Living in California for over thirty years, I’ve grown accustomed to two seasons – Winter and summer with a splash of spring thrown in for good measure.  Here we normally have relatively tempered weather year round.   You can tell it is summer  by the color of the foothills – “gold” is what the romantic books will call it – brown or yellow is what the people living here call it.  The grass is dead due to the low rain received between April and November each year.

In Connecticut where I grew up, seasons were much more distinct, more pronounced, more easily recognized...  AND there were (and are) four of them!

In the spring there might be light rain showers and thunderstorms, melting away snow and revealing milky gray soil and dead grass underneath.  Soon the grass would turn green, the blossoms on trees would sprout and the trees would turn luscious, deep shades of green.  You’d see lots of sand on the sides of the road, remnants of the snow trucks winter work.  Lakes and ponds would thaw while water life renewed itself with polliwogs, turtles and fish.  Birds would build nests and watch over their eggs.  Everything refreshed itself after the cold winter.

Spring would give way to summer, sometimes hot and humid, the air so thick that even at night the earth would hold it hostage making it hard to sleep.  From my open bedroom window the symphony of chirping crickets and croaking bullfrogs could be heard until the early morning sun crept over the horizon.  Summers also meant that school was out of session and we could spend nights staying out later and sleeping in for a few months. 

Labor day would signal that it was time to go back to school followed quickly by the temperatures starting to cool down and trees beginning their transformation from glorious greens to brilliant orange, red and yellow hues signaling that fall was indeed in full swing.  Almost as quickly as the leaves had turned color they also lost their essence and fell to the ground where we would rake huge piles on the lawn so that we could jump and hide in their crunchy mounds.  The grass would start to become stiff and change to winter brown and we knew that soon it would be Halloween.

Around the corner, winter would sneak in with nights so cold your breath became swirling clouds of white.  Soon you would awaken to a white blanket of snow covering the grounds and pray that there would be enough to make the schools close down so you could stay home and play in it.  The trees now stripped of their leaves would stand like tall poles in the snow reaching up to the gray skies.  Routines now consisted of throwing dirt on icy sidewalks and shoveling driveways.  Weekends were for sledding down our own hill, skating on our pond and building snow forts and snow men in the yard.  I can remember times when the pond was thick enough with ice to stand on yet transparent enough to see the ferns and muck beneath the surface. 

Occasionally we would be rampaged by icy rain pelting down on rooftops, revealing long, glistening icicles reaching down from rooftops and dripping down the rocks along the highway.  Sometimes the ice became so heavy that it would snap trees in half as though they were mere toothpicks in God’s kingdom.  Once or twice we had so much snow that it closed the entire state down for several days – something we as children loved but our parents endured.  I remember while in college in February of 1978 a storm came through and we watched from our window as students walked to the corner market to stock up on food and beverages for the coming days.    Known as “The Blizzard of ‘78” it wasn’t the biggest snowstorm to hit us at the time – that distinction belongs to the year 1888.  But, there was enough snow that Gov. Ella T. Grasso shut down the state and President Carter declared it a federal disaster area.  These were not the days of sport utility vehicles (SUVs) and 4-wheel drives so getting around by car during bad weather was not easy. 

  While not always one-hundred percent reliable, often the seasons themselves told us when it was time for school to start, for Thanksgiving to arrive, the groundhog to appear, Easter to be celebrated and school to end.  Mother Nature and life working hand in hand.