Hope Springs

On the one hand, it's hard to make conversation about anything but this winter's brutality. On the other hand, we here in New York are leaping at any sign of spring. A few illustrations...

On Sunday I ran around Prospect Park near sundown. I passed four riders on horseback, despite the still substantial snow cover. Reveling in the balmy 39-degree breezes, many joggers ran in shorts. Crossing the inner loop required deft timing as bikers, no longer fearing Death by Black Ice, clogged their lanes. I was surprised to find many kids still eager to sled, despite the punishing layer of ice that last week's rain lay over the choppy remains of the snow. The playgrounds teemed with tots again, even though access to the swings required traversing snow and slush waist-high to a two-year old.

Yesterday Reeve rode his scooter to meet Duncan at the bus. This would seem a small triumph unless you'd been living, as we have now for weeks, in 1-foot wide foot paths of ice where 4- and 8-foot wide concrete sidewalks used to be. On our return home, Duncan scaled the grimy peak of a glacial bank where he flexed his arms, announcing his super strength as a result of the "metal parts" in his body that draw power from the Cold. At home, I was finally able to break up the 6-inch deep ice jam on our back steps and clear a path to the backyard for poor old Wiley and his hips. And I did so without wearing a coat!

Make no mistake. It's gross out there. Trash pick-up has gotten the shaft as sanitation workers have been diverted to snow plowing. Public bins overflowed for weeks onto snow banks that are now melting, leaving a pervasive gray soggy detritus all over the city. (Yummy, Wiley says.) And we are still more than two months from seeing a leaf on a tree. But the hopefulness of New Yorkers itself lifts my spirit, however delusional we may be.