Sometimes signs of spring look like winter

April 9, 2006

SUNDAY SAMPLER/Sammye Pokryfki

Winter comes and goes as it pleases. Year after year, we Alaskans are somehow lulled into a false sense of spring, fooled by a few extra minutes of daylight and charmed by midday warmth. But winter always has the last laugh, tossing wet snow and sub-zero wind chills over its shoulder in a dramatic exit.

My coping mechanism is to ignore the lingering signs of winter and start anticipating the summer days that are just around the corner. It is my own little one-act play, and I know my part well. I rise earlier, I go to bed late, I think about flowers, take the snow tires off prematurely, leave the house without a coat, and fill up my calendar with plans for outdoor adventure and home improvement.

I act the same way when planning for a vacation. I pore over a guidebook for two weeks prior to departure, dreaming about the good times to come. I may still be physically here in Alaska, but in my mind, I am already gone.

I am not alone in my refusal to live for today's weather. I saw a woman the other day wearing shorts and sandals in the Fred Meyer parking lot.

It was a gorgeous sunny afternoon but only about 40 degrees. For her, summer had started. Never mind that her toes were frozen! The sun was shining and her legs were bare, and she was adding two months to summer just by looking forward to it.

I thought about her the next day when it snowed 3 inches, hoping she wasn't discouraged. After all, this unpredictable weather is a sure sign of spring.

Another sign of spring is the high school prom season. My daughter is a senior this year, and I feel like I'm in that commercial about George Steinbrenner and the Yankees, where he has writer's cramp from signing so many checks.

Last month, we traveled to Seattle to look at colleges. While we were there, it seemed like a good idea to find a prom dress, too.

It was easier to decide on the college than to decide on the dress, which was completely exhausting. She hated every one of the hundred or so that we looked at, and by the end of the day, so did I.

It was too soon to get tired, however, because we still had the shoes, the earrings, the hair, the makeup, the manicure, the corsages, the dinner and the transportation arrangements. Not to mention the endless conversations about who, when, where, and what do you mean I have a curfew?

On the Wednesday of prom week, her group of eight friends realized that they had reservations at three different restaurants at three different times. By the time the night finally came, they had been enjoying the prom for a couple of weeks via anticipation, and you would never know that the weather didn't suit the occasion. Laughing and sparkling, the kids put coats over their strapless gowns, used enough hair spray to ward off the freezing rain, and navigated snow berms in high heels.

And just like that, carried off on the laughter of prom-goers, winter has taken its last bow. Spring is center stage and impossible to ignore.

The driveway is awash in melt-off, each day a dog deposit emerges from the fading snow in the yard, and a winter's worth of dust is illuminated in the sunbeams that stream into the house. None of the messiness can dampen my spirits because the possibilities of summer seem as endless as the days to come.

I woke to a bright blue sky this morning and resolutely, hopefully dug my shorts out of the closet. In my mind, winter is already gone.

Sammye Pokryfki lives and writes in Wasilla. Contact her at sammyepokryfki@hotmail.com.