Plastic Wrap

The plastic wrap on large sailboats docked along the bay slowly disappears, leaving the boats now naked to the brutal spring weather. This change gives us all hope that the transition from winter to spring is really here.

Back in the fall, I never saw the boats being wrapped, like hamburgers ready to be tossed in a freezer, and now I have yet to see them unwrapped. I have come to conclude that sometime in the night a tiny elf, who slides up and down the ropes like Peter Pan, must be responsible.

Daffodils wave like artificial flowers that have been shoved in the ground in a desperate attempt to pretend that we are making progress. Tree branches splinter with just the tips of the buds. And lawns, only the ones who have been artificially stimulated with processed fertilizer to wake up early, are now a bright green, the exact shade of the plastic grass in Easter baskets (a product that this week is easily abundant at all local drug stores and at such a reduced price).

Everything is not just wet, but soggy. How I want to curl upand read my Tom Sawyer book in Spanish of which I can only really comprehend if I read fast and look at the pictures closely. Instead of reading, I find my towel and head to the poorly designed shower in my house, which drizzles at a rate much like the rain outside. I am not sure the purpose of the shower, when everything feels so damp. Maybe to wash away the stress of the day. Or maybe to help me pretend for a moment that I could be anywhere. Back in Costa Rica on a day so hot that I wonder if my running shoes will melt. Back in Oregon with the temperature rising so fast that I cannot seem to peel off clothes fast enough to keep up. Cold, cool, warm, hot. Ahhh, the tempo of the morning in a desert climate.

I am tired now from the long day behind me, but I cling to the thought. Of a nice hot day in a place without boats wrapped in plastic. A place with real grass and more flowers than seemingly artificial daffodils.