Bliss

Anticipation is the greater part of pleasure. (Angela Carter)

I love Spring. I love that first perfect weekend when flower boxes seem to demand to be filled with golden pansies, pink snapdragons, and the soft purple of delicate violas. I love the slow greening of the grass and the even slower budding of the trees. I love the explosion of color and the tremendous perfume that fills my morning and evening walks, when the world is quiet and the light is soft. I love the feeling of sunshine on my bare knees and the perpetual squint I wear when we walk into it. I love Spring like I love my memories of childhood, like I love the flavor of peach iced tea, like the dusty yellow blossoms of the Russian Olive trees. If I could find a place of perpetual Spring, with a constant unfolding of riches and rediscovered glories, I could retire there and spend the rest of my days the happiest of men.

But this evening, while making the long drive home across Denver, and then again on my walk with Duncan, I realized that perhaps it is not Spring I cherish so much but the anticipation of it. Our trees are still naked; the first leaves are only now––after three well-earned days of warmth and golden light––beginning to unfurl, their tips moist and shiny like the wings of a newly-hatched butterfly. The air is not yet filled with those fragrances for which I spend my year yearning. Spring has been slow to come, teasing us with hours, and only occasionally a day or two, of genuine brilliance, and has instead played coy behind rain and snow clouds, low grey skies and chilly winds that hardly compliment the season. It has been an early-November spring, the crags of the branches dark and empty against the sky. But now it is here, there is no denying it, and part of me can't help but wish it would never come continue to tease and build, retreat and tease again.

We have spent weeks riding the cusp of Spring, our anticipation growing every day, our dreams unfolding around us. But now she has arrived, we have teetered, finally, away from winter and the promise of summer stands directly in our path. I have relished this slow awakening and want for it to go on and on without end.

With the sky as blue as it was today, and the grass as tall and new and soft around my ankles, how I could want anything else? How could anyone?

Waiting, if you know how to do it right, is bliss.