Wednesday, March 18, 2015

spring


Spring is two days away.

As I get older, I’ve started to feel that either the seasons are changing with me, or that I am changing with the seasons. I can feel the difference in the air, and in the way that I laugh. You'll get a giggle in the summertime, on a warm evening with a roof deck somewhere that’s trying too hard to be trendy, with marquee letters that spell out BAR and all of those waiters with their silly gingham bow ties. It’s getting late, and your hardly-funny joke solicits a reserved giggle with just enough authenticity to suggest that maybe I laugh easily, that maybe I'll laugh even if it's not that funny. You'll get a loud, deep-down-in-my-belly laugh in the winter. An embarrassingly honest, uncontrollable laugh that surprises even me with its transparency, prematurely revealing everything you need to know because it’s a fearless laugh that is not trying to hide. My laugh changes with the seasons. I swear that’s just how it is.

Someone special (you) told me once that they liked the way I laugh because “it comes from here.” I wonder if you remember that. I wanted to say that that was my winter laugh, even though it was summer.

You should know that I'm onto you – that you are so predictable in all your senseless, roundabout unpredictability. I knew to watch out when you said you didn’t eat seafood or that you didn’t believe in the stock market, that my electricity bill seemed really high and maybe I should count the math. I’ve never been good at math, but spring is two days away, and I’m counting. Because my springtime laugh is hardly a laugh at all, because my springtime laugh says goodbye.