seasonal musings...

I'm sure you are all dying to know, has the wind stopped blowing yet, like weather.com predicted it would? And the answer is, no. No, it hasn't. I tried to go sit outside and enjoy the sunshine on my lunch break today and the wind blew the soup off of my spoon. Needless to say, I packed it in pretty quickly... It's such a shame, too, because it really has been lovely here, lately. Day after day of perfectly sunny, beautiful weather - all ruined by the gale-force winds.

On another weather-related note, I was reading another blog today, and there was a description of a Seattle fall day. Specifically, "The nights are starting their long, slow stretch; the mornings grow cooler and cloudier", which just immediately set off a twinge in my heart and a memory of seasons, which I still miss so much. I miss that subtle, almost-unnoticable shift in the weather that signals, instantly, that the seasons are changing. The kind that you wouldn't notice if you hadn't experienced a place for a long period of time. And I think when you have lived with seasons your whole life, you associate those little shifts in weather with specific memories and experiences. That description above immediately set off 10,000 memories in my mind that I associate with fall. With just a description, I can almost feel the crisp air, feel the leaves crunching under my feet, taste the change in the air - it's such an intense feeling, association. And it makes me wistful, and long for those days. I have these kind of memories and these feelings about every season - spring, summer, even winter. Each season has it's own feel, and it's own batch of experiences.

Right now in Portland, would be about the time that the tiny, subtle shifting towards spring begins. Just a fraction more warmth in the air. Tiny green buds on the trees, reaching towards any hint of sunshine. There is hope in the air - of warmth, of growth, of summer. It's a season of shaking off the cobwebs, of renewal, of stretching out limbs that have been trapped indoors for too long. Of getting out and digging in the dirt again, just being outside, feeling the cool air on your skin.

I'm sure it is because I haven't experienced San Francisco for long enough, that I can't sense the seasons here. It's too subtle for me still. I had no sense of a spring ever coming here. If there was a shift, it was completely under the radar for me. Temperatures remain about the same, every day is sunny. I almost welcome the fog that is supposed to come in the summertime, because at least it would be different. Something close to, or at least somewhat resembling, a season.

And yet, it is hard to say if even if there were seasons down here - if tomorrow I felt that subtle shift between winter and spring in the air, somehow - would it be the same? Because of all of my seasonal affections, memories, are tied to a different place. I have a feeling that I would feel the days shorten and cool in fall and wish to be home at mom and dad's, helping Devin make apple cider. Or smelling freshly cut grass and seeing a break in the rain showers and heading out for a quick walk, avoiding the puddles. So I don't think it is the seasons that I miss - I think I just miss my home.