THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9603310041
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ELIZABETH SIMPSON
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
We are ready to burst from the seams of our house.
It has been a long winter. I wonder whether we can survive another minute inside.
My daughters, 3 and 5, are at the age when they need most of the outdoors to accommodate their personalities. The sky is the only ceiling they don't bump up against; the back yard the only place they don't knock elbows.
To be young, you need room. Lots of it.
My children have proven to me, over the winter of '96, that one house is too small for two girls who frequently break into tears, point at the other, and scream, ``She's LOOKING at me!''
Oh, the indignity.
While mostly best playmates, there are times when they get on each another's nerves, when they need more space. We are now approaching ground zero.
The journey to this point began in January when the electricity went off, leaving the three of us huddled together beneath blankets. ``The lights will come on any minute now,'' I kept saying. ``Any second, you can have the whole house to play in again.''
``Any minute now'' came two days later. That, after moving into a hotel room, and hearing a constant refrain that went something like this: ``Mom, she's touching me. Mom, she's on my side of the bed. Mom, she's breathing on me.''
They love each other, but they are young, and they need room.
For us, spring is not just about renewal and rebirth. It's not just about Easter and flowers and birds and spring breezes.
It is about going outside. Spring is about unfolding the world to two children whose energy spills out in torrents. It's about talking over the fence with neighbors, riding bikes down the street, running as far as we can go.
Outside we dream bigger. We jump higher, throw harder, go farther. The world is bigger and better and bolder, and so are we.
Doesn't winter know it has worn out our patience for puzzles? We have played Candyland until we know every trick the 5-year-old can pull. Our boxes of crayons look as though they have been through war, their paper coverings gone, their tips worn flat.
We've painted until the paints have all mixed into brown. We've beaded necklaces until every family member has matching sets of jewelry we will never wear in public.
And now, we are ready to go outside.
We are ready to let the back door slam behind us. Ready to race the wind and soak in sun. Ready to abandon inside, ready to be, as my aunt always put it, ``out of doors.''
We have new sand in the sandbox, new sidewalk chalk, new kites. We have new tennis shoes good for stomping just-mowed grass. We have a garden with worms to poke and plants to prod.
But winter keeps chasing us inside. He is not done.
So we stand by the window looking out, wondering, as we do every year, whether spring will really come again.
Will this be the year when the greenhouse effect changes things irreparably? Will mad cow disease delay the season? Will Bob Dole's candidacy shake the Earth off its axis?
Of course not. No force of man will alter spring. We have only to wait.
Come and get us, spring. We are ready. by CNB