Monday Memory: Snow in March

March 12, 2007

I am spoiled forever by the South, I really am. My father was mentioning "snow" and "Stephen" today, and I realized that he was talking about all the snow my brother Stephen has in N.Y. The kids and I spent a couple of hours this afternoon at a park. When we came home, they put on shorts and played outside until 7:30 p.m. The daffodils and hyacinths are up, and the redbuds are just about to burst. In New York, winter drags on. The photo above is my mother on her cross-country skis and me tagging along behind, perhaps in March when I was about 6. March was still a winter month then; we didn't even hope for spring until mid-April. Even then, sometimes a spring snow would surprise us, bending the blooming lilacs down to the ground. I miss lilacs. I don't miss the mushy March snows.