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Tales from Exit 22 by Al Batt

I’d promised myself I wouldn’t cry.

And I didn’t shed a tear at winter’s passing.

It had no last words.

My father’s last dying word was “Robert.”

Robert was my uncle, my father’s brother, who had died as a young man. They were close.

When I was a boy, my elders told me of someone who had said “Hello” with his last dying breath. I believed them. With all the people who have died, every word has been the last word. “Hello” is a common word.

Each March, when the first day of the astronomical spring hits, winter is as likely to say “Hello” as it is to say “Goodbye.” I open the door and a lion walks in.

There were years when we had a foot of snow one day, and the grass was a foot tall the next, but the start of spring is vernal, not always verdant. Sometimes, spring oversleeps. A bee must ask, “Hey, bud, when do you open?”

Then things grow as nothing had grown before, especially the gitchas and the gotchas.

Winter practices a noble tradition called the Minnesota Goodbye, which is the default setting for many Minnesotans. An imminent departure lingers for an extended period as the process involves checking the time, sighs, a few steps, hugs, chats at the door and in the driveway, and a long fleeing wave.

Winter leaves, but it might linger. Remnants of the Ice Age persist.

Winter can be a bully. It’s tough but unfair. It’s not all winter’s fault. Sometimes spring is like me when I can’t find my butt with a map.

The problem is that we don’t have enough days in a year to keep all the seasons happy. Into each spring, a little winter must fall. Spring is a season of fits and starts.

Rather than go outside and see what my tongue will stick to in order to gauge the season, I listen to the radio, waiting for that glorious day when the person giving the weather report has a spring in his voice. He’ll promise to monitor the twitches of winter as they slow to a stop.

Each spring, I bounce around in the car like dice in a cup. Spring’s potholes turn each city into Dodge City. Spring had hit with a thud that stirred road crews into moving the bumps in the road into the dips and potholes. When the bumps are gone, they duct tape the remaining potholes shut, but not before they chase all the spelunkers from those underground caves. The only potholes that endure are those with historical significance.

The “Caution: Bridge may not be icy” signs go up.

Spring is in the air, and it smells like skunks. The odor of a skunk is an anticipated scent of spring and a whiff of winter’s weakening.

Migrating birds bring their own snow shovels. Turkey vultures return, and they aren’t interested in Meals on Wheels. They prefer meals under wheels. Conversational common grackles, flying oil slicks cackling like rusty gates, become as common as lies on social media. Every male robin finds something to sing about: “Cheerily, cheer up, cheer up, cheerily, cheer up!” If a bird that’s about to have a breakfast of worms begins its day with a song, why shouldn’t we?

I become a dandelion whisperer. The yard quickly reaches its limit of the yellow flowers. I offer fine dining opportunities for mosquitoes as I try to straddle a mud puddle with the wheelbarrow on my way to gather piles of short sticks, old hats and bits of shriveled carrots from the snowmen‘s graveyard.

Spring is much ado about something. It’s a time to nidify — to build a nest.

Our spring isn’t like the weather in normal places. That’s because there are no normal places.

The sun came back from Florida. I’ll miss winter, but not much. I’ll be too busy hiding my cold-weather clothing in places where I’d never look. Spring had finally overpowered winter. It may be a time of jacket uncertainty, but at least I won’t need to mow around a snowman.

The snowman in front of the Lutheran Church melted. Pastor Parson said the man of snow had gone to a colder place.

Al Batt’s columns appear in the Tribune every Wednesday.