The Departure of a Minnesota Winter...Perfectly Penned

The excerpt below is from Blue Heart Blessed, a Christian fictional novel I am currently reading. It is set in current day Minneapolis, MN. (You can learn more about it by investigating my book shelf on the right margin of this blog site.) I enjoyed this passage since it spoke so closely at my time of reading it, in relation to the current day & season... and my own life experience.

Some people say spring in Minnesota takes its time arriving. Winter --- that lovely white season that never wants to let go -- can hang around till after Easter. It can leave and then come back. There was many a time growing up when I wore a wool cap to church on Easter Sunday instead of a bonnet. I've played soccer with mittens on my hands. I've sat before a fireplace on May Day. I've put blankets on newly planted window boxes when frost was predicted. There are years when it seems like I live a mere stone's throw from the North Pole.

And just about the time you think you'll go mad, you see your first robin, and that's all anyone talks about because they've all just seen their first robin, too. The last of the snow --- truly disgusting stuff that's more brown than white-- finally melts away and the heads of tulips erupt from the ground like little green noses. May can begin with a lovely set of days that tease you into thinking you can put away your coat and gloves, but halfway through the month an arctic wind will leave you shivering at softball games, track meets, and outdoor graduation parties.

Then one day, maybe it's Memorial Day or the first of June, a lever will be thrown somewhere in heaven, and the climate will make an abrupt shift that has you fiddling with your heater one day and your air conditioning the next. That to me is not spring taking its time. That is winter taking its time. Taking its time leaving. Spring arrives in one day in Minnesota. And leaves the next.

It is abrupt, not sluggish.

The weather will be cold and blustery one day--- and then the next, warm and muggy. It can happen that fast.

Your world can change that fast.