Sun Lover

Outside my window tiny birds are singing and chirping and bouncing off the branches, way too early in this New England Yankee’s opinion. It’s only the first of February, for Pete’s sake.

And those tulips six inches out of the ground, please be careful. It’s too soon! Children walk to school in tee shirts and uh oh, something red is blooming on a bush over in the neighbor’s yard. Surely a frost will burn every petal.

Maybe not. Maybe I really do live in California where the temperature rarely drops to thirty-five. When it does I’m the only citizen of this state who shivers.

You can take the girl out of Connecticut but you can’t take the Connecticut winter out of this girl. Brrs, who knew even fifty degrees was so hard to take?

If I get my lazy butt off this chair and go into the back yard to pull a few thriving weeds, I’ll warm up. Then I can shed my winter jacket the same as the kids and start blooming like that bush.

Yesterday the sun burned through the heavy clouds and struck my pale face with the same hot caress I remember from all my summers. For many years now I let my shins burn while I incorrectly roasted my body in summer’s luxurious heat.

I thought back to all those springs I’ve been toasting myself, darkening those horrid age spots without giving a damn. It’s been a long time. Me and the sun, we don’t count years so we don’t get older, we just meet up every spring at the same time.

When Old Sol slides out from behind a March or April cloud I slide out of my jeans and into the skimpiest shorts I can dig up and I ask him to give me that long, lovely kiss that burns my thighs and spackles my face with no-doubt-damaging red spots. By tomorrow those enthusiastic inflammations will be a lovely pale gold and I’ll expose my backside to Old Sol.

Have you way with me, again, Sir.

I know my annual affair with the sun will not go on forever. One day I’ll be a wizened old woman, lost in her brown wrinkles, still begging for one last kiss. And these birds, such busy little creatures arguing over a seed or a mate, they’ll be too busy to notice that I’m getting another sunburn. The sharp leaves of the umpteenth generation of tulips will look just as premature as they do today.

Careful, I might wheez at them. But what I really mean, Thank God you're up. Winter is over. The Sun is back and he’s going to have his way with me one more time.