Spring Fever

It’s difficult to avoid when it’s nearly seventy degrees, and it’s not even March yet. When I was growing up, I dreaded spring. My mother didn’t just spring clean. She spring cleaned, painted, wallpapered, and redecorated. My father would say one day all the holes she put in the walls moving pictures and mirrors around would one day run together and the house would fall down. If that were to happen in spring, I wasn’t sure he would notice. Not only was there the usual yard work he would sentence my brother and me to, but in spring he started obsessing over firewood. He would volunteer to cut down trees for friends and family members. We would drag limbs, stack logs, and rake up the mess… To this day the sound of a chainsaw makes me cry.

I swore when I grew up I would never let the first signs of spring turn me into some crazed maniac with a To Do list designed to torture innocent children!

And then the other day I was standing at the patio door looking out on an afternoon that seemed more like one in April than February. I was thinking the ornamental grasses needed to be cut back, and the patio needed to be pressure washed. While I had the washer out, I might as well do the front porch and shutters… While I was dragging things around the garage to get to the washer, I should do some sprucing up there because we were going to need the tools to clean out flowerbeds and prune hedges.

“What are you doing?” my 13 yr old asked shrilly.

I turned, and recognized the fear in his eyes. He saw that gleam in his mother’s eyes that told him leisurely winter weekends were coming to an end…and I was going to work him and his brother like mules. I started rattling off the To Do list as he winced with every word.

“Cheer up, buddy! It could be worse,” I assured, patting his back. “At least I don’t have a chainsaw.”