Adjusting for Spring

My mother wakes up every morning to a tiny, timed bedside light ticking on -- a silent indication that the day is coming before the sun gets too high, and I picture her waking gradually, stretching her arms and blinking her eyes slowly open to a warm glow. This isn't our style. The alarm next to our bed, our own air horn to my mother's peaceful morning light, must be set to NBA-arena volume to get us stirring. This radio has been stuck for some time between stations - a loud, obnoxious morning show with dirty jokes and Lady Gaga music blares at 7 a.m. in between waves of static. We snooze for at least a half-hour, so the sound of it jolting back on every ten minutes might drive our neighbors crazy, if we had any. It's been like this for weeks, and neither of us have bothered to change it. After all, we're not morning people to begin with, not by any means, and anything we wake up to will be on our hit list of worst enemies - might as well be something we already don't care much for.

The weather here is finally changing, and I put on my walking shoes and took small bites out of the city this weekend, one step at a time. Kelly drive was delightfully crowded, and I walked out to the edges of it with a friend, sat on the banks of the Schuylkill and basked in the sun. On Sunday, I walked deep into the city, had a smoothie and went bathing suit shopping. These first few hints of spring's mildness, even if we do have a few more bursts of coat weather, are just so, so sweet. Whenever this time of year rolls around, I find that I'm much more ready and willing to jump out of bed in the morning and face the warm day, the sun, the possibility of a thin cotton dress instead of layers and layers of clothing. Even my trip to work seems a little bit more colorful. And in the next few weeks, after changing the bed-clothes to something lighter and cracking the windows for the first time in months, I just might readjust that radio dial to something pleasant and airy.