Reflections on spring, time, and seasonal shifts

On saying goodbye to winter, waiting for sunshine, and welcoming baseball cap weather with open arms

I left the house the other night to go meet a friend in my lighter puffer jacket and, in a moment of bravery, decided I didn’t need a hat or gloves. I’d been at the park with my kid a few hours prior, soaking in a bit of subtle warmth and celebrating the fact that spring was about to be within reach.

Before I had reached the end of my block, I noticed the chill in the air and shoved my hands in my pockets. I told myself that I could push through and I kept going—I was trying to make a very specific train, after all. During my eight-minute walk to the subway, my ears started stinging and I whipped out my phone to quickly text my husband, “colder than I thought”. I kept it short—my hands begging to return to the safe haven of my jacket pockets.

March does that—gives us a little taste of what’s to come before quickly reverting to the cold we’ve been dealing with for months as if to taunt us (or maybe make us proverbially ‘work’ for what’s to come). Despite the ups and downs of the weather, March is always a reminder that the slow, cold, and dark days of winter are almost behind us. As if to say, “don’t worry, it’s coming, please trust me”. We might get a taste of warmth and then go back to chillier days, but it won’t be long before I’m popping a daily Zyrtec and gathering our coats to take to the dry cleaner, to be stored until the cool air comes back months later.

This year (here in New York, at least) March 1st was a wonderfully sunny day while March 2nd a miserably cold one. And between now and then, it’s been a mix between the two. The past few days have been gloomy, a little wet, and slightly chilly, but there’s also this humidity in the air that reminds me warmer days are coming (as it brings a not-so-delightful frizz to my hair).

Every time I leave the house, I’m not quite sure what to wear—are my wool socks too much, can I leave my gloves at home, is it ~finally~ baseball cap weather, do I really need a long sleeve under my sweater (or, on a few days, do I really need a sweater at all)?

happiest during baseball cap weather!

While part of me is relishing in knowing that, regardless of how long it takes, spring will eventually knock down my door, part of me wants to engage in a round of bargaining with her—this winter felt so long and was so cold, that I really think it would be in everyone’s best interest if we put the sub-50º temps behind us, for good (or at least until, like, mid-to-late October).

This past winter was one of the longest and coldest that I remember in recent history. There were many more below-freezing days this year than in recent years (based on my memory, at least), and it felt like more than a few times we’d push through a few days of single-digit temperatures, only to return to them again in a week or two.

It made it difficult for me to do anything other than the bare minimum. It wasn’t just the cold, but how relentless this season as a whole felt. The short days and bitter air made leaving the house feel like an obstacle and I went through a few periods where I not only didn’t want to leave the house, but leaving my bed felt difficult.

I know winter is a time where we’re supposed to hibernate and look inward, and the pressures of life and capitalism or whatever make it hard to remember that, but this year, the desire to slow down felt magnified to a degree I don’t want to return to.

I spent much of winter circling between moments of feeling low-energy, numb, uninterested, and sad; I knew I wasn’t ‘my self’ and cognitively knew the steps I should take, but the six-degree wind chill made it difficult to want to do anything about it. My appetite was all over the place and my sleep hygiene got to a low I haven’t seen in a very long time.

I am not a stranger to these feelings, but it was magnified this year. I can’t fully blame it on the severity of this winter and I know that correlation is not causation, but I also can’t confidently say that this winter wasn’t at least a variable at play.

I first realized this in December¹, but it really hit me in February. February is always rough—so much of winter has passed, but it still feels like there’s a lot ahead of us (and sometimes, the coldest days are still to come). This February, I recognized that I’d been feeling lonely and isolated² and had to decide whether I would sit in it or do something about it.

I realized I couldn’t wait for the marker of warm weather in order to come out of my shell—I had to make plans, something I know in the long run helps³ but feels like a mountain to climb in the moment. I made an effort to reach out to various friends and set up some after-work dates—dinners, drinks, a board game night, and a FaceTime with a friend across the country (who I couldn’t take out to dinner, even if I’d wanted to).

At first, I’ll admit it felt forced. The first plans I made were with two of my friends, whom I often, but not always, see together. When one of them initially canceled, I was relieved—I hadn’t yet changed out of my sweatpants, and not having to felt like a reprieve. The friend who canceled didn’t have a free night until the following week, and so I was about to throw in the towel, figuring out a day next week to meet up.

“Just go out with [other friend that didn’t cancel and didn’t have other plans],” my husband said.

“Oh yeah,” I thought, “I guess I should still try to get out this week”. I texted that friend, admitting that I wasn’t quite ready to change out of my sweatpants but the two of us should try again the next night. She agreed, we did, and had a lovely dinner (plus a martini and an Amaro).

As the weeks went on and I saw a few more of my friends, I felt myself coming out of hibernation. Checking in with these friends over dinner, drinks, board games, or FaceTime shouldn’t be a hard thing to do, but it’s so easy to get caught up in the day to day.

By the time the weather gave us a little tease of getting warmer, I was ready to embrace it, and had already worked through the fog and cobwebs of getting back into the world.

Spring doesn’t just symbolize weather getting warmer, though. There is a very real feeling of rebirth, renewal, etc. As the snow melts for good, trees get their leaves back and flowers bloom. The earth goes through a very familiar process of starting fresh, which isn’t new. I’m going through it too—I think to some extent most of us are.

As the seasons shift, making plans and spending time out of the house becomes not just easier to tolerate but also something that I actually desire. I can’t say the same about being in the thick of winter—leaving the house feels like a chore, my sweatpants feel like a permanent part of my body, and I am overwhelmingly less social.

These cyclical markers that show up as we move through seasons help me move through different phases: a rebirth in spring, fully coming to life in the summer, returning to softer routines in autumn⁴, and hibernation in winter.

Said another way: seasons are just another marker of time—and a powerful one at that.

But what happens when those markers are taken away?

I didn’t understand just how much I relied on seasons to move through time until I lived somewhere that had very mild ones. I remember being at work one day in early March of 2017, after I’d been living in the Bay Area for six months, and a co-worker saying, “thank goodness, it’s March. Hopefully that horribly rainy winter is behind us”.

“That’s it?” I blurted out, swinging around in my office chair to look at her. “That was winter? That flew by!”

In that moment, I had two realizations: one, that winter was over and it was really very mild (and that, wow, I could get used to this) and two, without an extreme winter, the last six months both raced by and also felt very long and indistinguishable.

I’d held on to my big puffy North Face during my first winter out there and donated it a few weeks into March. I didn’t really think about whether I’d ever need it again—I just saw a big coat taking up precious closet real estate.

Time moved both fast and slow out there. Fast because winter was gone in the blink of an eye, but slow because when the weather is (mostly) the same mild temperatures for five months, it’s hard to know where you are, what season it is, how much time has gone by, and from November to March it’s a bit of a whirlwind. Month over month, going by in a haze.

Most of my memories in the Bay Area, when I think about them seasonally, are divided into two time periods: warmer weather and cooler weather, which made the three years we spent there feel much longer and much shorter than they were. It weirdly makes a lot of the time spent there blend together, and I’m not sure exactly when certain memories happened; I rely on context clues like which apartment we lived in, what my hair looked like, where I was working, and which wall the couch was on to try to orient a specific memory in time.

It's different on the East Coast, with four distinct seasons—at the highest of highs and the lowest of lows here, we have the potential for temperatures to span over 100 degrees. In San Francisco, the lowest and the highest temperatures we’d normally see were within 30 degrees of each other⁵.

On the East Coast, I am able to divide my years in four, which is to me what feels natural. Sometimes I can't quite remember if something was November of one year or January of the next, but for the most part I can keep things straight. I do sometimes have to rely on other variables (again, which apartment we were living in or whether I was pregnant or if this was before or after our son was born or how deep into the pandemic we were), but keeping track of time feels a bit easier to manage with seasons.

With seasons, time also moves at what to me feels like a more steady pace. Maybe just one I'm used to—I grew up with four seasons, after all, and had lived with four seasons for 25 years before moving (plus an additional five after coming back East). Maybe these patterns are hard to break, and it’s less about the seasons themselves—maybe the insight here is that flipping what you’re used to on its head is going to mess with how time is perceived.

I don’t think it’s as simple as saying that one way of moving through time is better than another, or even that I am team ‘extreme seasons or bust’. After all, the weather in the Bay was one of the best things about living there, and I’m a firm believer that there’s no better time to run⁶ than a San Francisco winter—when the air is cool enough for layers yet mild enough to make movement feel easy. I’ve never been so active during the winter before then (or since).

The lack of frigid winters and extremely hot and humid summers was probably my favorite thing about living in San Francisco, even if what it did to time was weird.

I don’t particularly like the extreme temperatures, if I’m being honest. I’m the first to complain when things feel too cold and also fairly intolerant of the heat and humidity. At the same time, I appreciate how extreme seasons help us move through time, forcing us to take notice and adjust our expectations for ourselves. Seasons create rhythm and sequence—whether we want them to or not.

Seasons force us to take stock of where we are in time. They mark transitions, shift our routines, and help shape how we show up. Without them, time still moves but to me, it feels different and harder to grasp. Maybe if I’d stayed in San Francisco for longer, I would’ve found my own markers to help anchor time a bit better—more than just two halves of the year, marked by whether I left the house with my light puffer or my denim jacket.

Spring is coming, as it always does. The light lingers a little longer each day and we all wake up. I am currently defrosting—albeit slowly—and look forward to coming out of my shell and many more baseball cap days.

1. I think my writing about the holidays and the new year subtly touched on this, maybe without me realizing it.

The duality of (simply) having a wonderful Christmastime

Happy New Year (or whatever)

2. I am pretty aware of the fact that it takes a lot for me to feel lonely—I overwhelmingly enjoy spending time with myself and really enjoy my own company. So if I’m actively feeling lonely, I’ve learned to listen and make some damn plans!

3. The other thing that helps? A shower. Sometimes you just need a shower.

4. As an American my desire to say ‘the fall’ is strong here, but I can’t get this one TikTok out of my head:

@amberkacherianIn honor of the first day of fall, bringing back the one that started it all. 🇬🇧🇺🇸🍂 #unitedkingdom #unitedstates #uk #usa #ukvsusa #british #american #words #autumn #fall #firstdayoffall #funny #humor #funnyvideo

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5. I think in my time in SF, there was one day I can remember that hit as low as 32º, and a very uncharacteristic heat wave that was three days of low 90s (in September), but these aren’t the norm. Also, after that low day and high three days, it went back to ~45º and ~70º, respectively, so those were more weird moments amongst the two-season blur.

6. I’m not a runner. I mostly hate running. The only city I ever ran in consistently was San Francisco, and I loved it. Despite the hills, it felt easy out there. All year, running was pleasant.