Welcomed

I’m intoxicated. Don’t jump to conclusions. By God, it’s the most beautiful day in DC thus far this year, and it’s so gorgeous here that I’m suppressing my every urge to write the post I was going to about tourists being kind to DC residents while invading our space to gawk at the cherry blossoms. It’s downright sublime.

This is perhaps the pinnacle of the year for my city, when suddenly the runners around the park are baring their pasty legs and they care not that they haven’t lost their requisite winter weight. The air smells of barbeque and you don’t even mind that your neighbor has forgotten that smoke rises, and rises right into your living room with a right turn into your cats’ lungs. Traffic doesn’t seem as grueling, because the monuments are set against what only this morning was an overcast, weeping sky. The girls across the street come home later than usual and their jackets have been traded for short-sleeved tees. The windows are open and you can almost hear the Pepco bill falling.

Spring in DC is about wishing you had learned how to put the rented convertible’s top down before leaving work. About turning the car heat on only your feet because the sun has found the rest of you. About switching to a white wine because you invite the initial chill. And about walking the extra few blocks to catch a cab, about drinking street side while rubbing your feet against the brick, and about leaving the lined dress pants hanging in the closet until the next cold front comes through.

It isn’t the couple’s season, which bodes even better for the single girl. It’s group spring brunches spent with sunglasses atop your head and a solo walk at lunch that doesn’t leave you longing for his hand around your waist. It’s laughing loudly at a joke because there isn’t cold silence in the streets, without a care as to who hears you. It’s knowing softball on the Mall and conversations with neighbors on the front stoop are around the corner. Everyone is looking upward, if only to let the sun touch their cheeks, and there’s no need to grab another for warmth. No one is ever alone in spring.

So yes, please, come see the cherry blossoms, and enjoy this ridiculously beautiful city as much as I do. And remember that crossing a DC street is done in the same way that it’s done in your home state, even if grandpa keeps honking at you from the Buick across the street with a Zebra cake in his mouth, and that taking a mid-intersection picture of those gorgeous, bubbly blossoms is worth a thousand words, but is also grounds for being pummeled by a rental car regardless of the warmth of the night’s breeze or this appreciative, spring-drunk local’s heart.