One day in late March when I was about sixteen or seventeen I bought a CD of French Impressionist flute and piano music, and ever since this style always means Spring to me. It is forever associated with slowly warming sun beams, melting snow drifts, and the cheerful whistle of returning robins. It brings the promise of crocuses and tulips pushing through still-cold earth on the sunny south side of my neighbour's house and the relief of ever-lengthening daylight. There is something about this music which embodies Spring's strange dichotomy of warm and cold, dark and light.
Bright notes of silver and gold float through the air, and I'm instantly transported. I'm drinking sweet, milky darjeeling in the sunny living room of my parents' old house. I'm walking home from town on a warm, melty spring day wearing just a sweater, feeling ever-so-free without my heavy winter coat. I'm snuggled up in an armchair with a favourite book. It means simple pleasures: the musty smell of dirt after winter when the snow melts, a misting of green buds on the trees, the trickle of melt water in the drain pipes and down the road drains, lying on the floor in a square of warm light, variegated tulips, and the first dandelion of spring.
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