Eternal Spring

I have worked with buyers who haven’t bought anything for years. And years. And sometimes, those buyers buy something. That’s nice when they do. Other times, they buy nothing, which is sad for me but far more miserable for them. When I work with these sorts of buyers, I am patient. Real estate is a game of fits and starts, of hurrying up and waiting and hurrying up again. It is a game best played by those with a mix of patience and energy. Of those two traits, patience is the more important.

This is strange to note because while I am patient in real estate, I am anything but in everything else. If I have a task to complete, I generally am not patient, I am in an extreme hurry. I’m pretty much in a hurry whenever I’m doing anything. This is a helpful habit at times, and it helped me when I was a dish washer at Charley O’s many years ago. I would wash dishes very quickly, in between eating some food off of plates that came back looking mostly untouched. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t eat french fries that had ketchup soaked tips, but I would eat some fries if they appeared saliva free and unmolested. I would also make trips to the outside refrigerated room to deliver the produce that had just arrived that morning. I would then sit in that cellar and eat a handful of strawberries and a few pears. Then I’d whip the core of the pear into the neighboring lawn and stuff the tops of the strawberries in my pockets. When I did this, I did it quickly.

Today, my patience has run out. It’s going to be 50 today. It’s also going to be windy. It’s going to look like a spring day, and I suppose for someone that’s fine. For me, it isn’t. I’m done with spring. I’ve had enough. A man can only endure so many 50 degree windy days before he needs something different. I have reached that point, and I’m close to breaking. The spring that alternates from windy to rainy to sunny and ranges from 42 on bad days to 62 on good ones is completely overrated. I think, today, that I hate spring.

I love spring in the middle of winter. The thought of it carries me through those dark, cold days. But fires in a fireplace also help me out, and I build roaring ones as often as I can. And if I’ve been blessed with a good year, I’ll take my family on a vacation to some warm beach, and we’ll be sunburned. This is what can be done in the middle of winter. But in spring, I don’t want to build a fire. I have cleaned my fireplaces out, and I will not be burning in them again until the first cold night in October. They sit there now, unused and cleaned, doing me no good. Spring isn’t for fires. Spring isn’t for vacationing either. Spring is to be welcomed as early as possible, tolerated for a while, and then whisked away before it overstays its welcome.

Today It has been here for too long. If not for a few leaves popping and growing each day, I would swear this was groundhog day, though I’m thankfully not in Woodstock. I wake up to 40 some degrees, 30 on a few days, maybe 50 on others, and I go through the day not sure whether to take off a light jacket or put one on. If I take the boat out and it is calm and warm, it will turn windy and cool within moments of departure, and then I question why I went out in the first place. We live each day as though it were the day before, there is no gradual improvement in conditions. We peaked at 80 in March and haven’t sniffed it since. I cannot live like this.

And so it is, another spring, lasting too long, even if it came delightfully early. I’m ready for summer. For warm mornings and warm nights, for days when I can leave my house in short sleeves without first wondering if I should grab a jacket, just in case. I hate jackets. I don’t want to see another one for at least five months, perhaps six. I don’t want to be surprised to see a boat cruising past the shoreline, I want to expect it. I want to sweat because it’s hot out, not because I wore a jacket and underestimated the way sun warms the inside of my car even when the air temperature dictates an outer layer. I want to hear cicadas and frogs at night, and I want to bury any memory of this petulant, enduring spring.

I know it’s only April. I know May will be more of the same. But I also know how I feel, and today I feel as though summer must come soon or I may not make it another day. Now I have to go to my car to grab my coat. My office is chilly and I refuse to turn the heat up. Beat it, spring.