People here are used to long hard winters. I believe that is why they are so very happy and festive in the summer and, apparently, the spring. I thought I'd have to wait for summer to see the celebrating, but it has come earlier than that.
Our first day of spring was gray and a little cold, but the people here determinedly celebrated it. People worked in their yards. At the Sackets Brewery, they had put up a game that involved what looked like a short volleyball net and a football. Young people (they looked like soldiers) were out there playing it, listening to music, and the dogs and I could smell hamburgers cooking behind them.
But the funniest thing is how excited everyone got over our village's quilt show.
Sackets Harbor is a nice village where people come to eat good food, shop for expensive little pretty things, go out on boats and eat ice cream in the park or under the gazebo by the lake. It closes for the winter, and people miss it.
Today, we had our first bigger public event of the season -- a quilt show at the Seaway Discovery Center. Quilt shows are nice, and people like them. But usually, they only draw a few enthusiasts. Not so our quilt show. There were almost no parking spaces left along Main Street. Smiling, jolly people walked around discussing the quilts, eating in the restaurants, and watching the newly-thawed lake. The clouds never really parted, but everyone seemed determined to live as if it was a sunny spring day.
I'm from a place with lots of sun. Most of our seasons are kind of harsh: Winter is cold and slippery. Spring is full of tornadoes. Summer is dangerously hot. Only autumn is really nice, and sometimes it's not. Here, they have the long, freezing winter, but when the sun comes and stays, they live in a flowery green paradise followed by famously beautiful autumn leaves. So after the hardship of snow, they leap up and celebrate. They can quit bending over snow shovels and layering clothes over their skin, and so they throw themselves into the good time of warm weather like people in Oklahoma don't have to, because we have plenty.
It's fun to be with them when they are like this, so hopeful and ready to have a good time. And it's especially fun to live in the lake village where they come to have it. I miss the snow, but I'm glad to see our village waking up and the visitors coming to see us.
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