Heads or Tails #81 -- spring memory

In today's Heads or Tails, Barb has me at a true disadvantage. She says we are to write about a "spring memory."

Writing about memories is not the problem. I have lots of memories. They do tend to range from the wildly inaccurate to the wholly fraudulent, but still.... No, the problem isn't memory; the problem is "spring."

We don't have Spring... as a season... in Chicago. We generally go from miserably cold to miserably hot sometime around the beginning of June. There are usually a couple of days -- an afternoon here, a morning there, sometimes an entire day -- on which we enjoy Spring-like conditions. But it's not like we can actually plan for them. So this will have to do....

I'd been home from the hospital for about three weeks; it was the end of March 2007. That's Spring, right? Middle Son was scheduled to pitch in a college game that day and I was determined to go.

I had a variety of issues at that time... none of them pleasant to recall or discuss... but I learned about a new one that day.

It was about 32 degrees out. That's 32 degrees Fahrenheit -- 0 degrees Celsius -- and it wasn't snowing... exactly... but it was sort of misting. The mist was sometimes ice or water. The college kids were going to play in these conditions; Long Suffering Spouse and I dressed like Nanook of the North. Still, we had our lawn chairs in the van -- a nice Summer touch. Not that you could see the lawn chairs when we set up. We were covered in blankets, too.

And still I froze.

I can't remember being more chilled.

Middle Son pitched well, as I recall. But I recall especially that it was cold. When he was finally relieved -- in the seventh inning, I think -- Long Suffering Spouse and I retreated to the car. We could see the game, sort of, through the windshield. We were running the motor then, with the heat blasting. I was still freezing. Al Gore, forgive me.