Provo in the Springtime

I think I will always remember my first spring in Provo. I was fifteen, and it was, in some ways, my first spring because I had previously lived in Southern California. While spring exists in Southern California (it's when the hills with a brown tint take on a green tint, before they get the yellow tint, duh), it doesn't have the same effect.

It was a perfect storm in some ways: I was fifteen and at the peak of my ridiculous, dramatic, romantic-ness; I had spent the winter being lonely, bored, and cold; and I played Chopin nocturnes on the piano and read Bronte novels. Then, gradually and all at once, daylight savings, friends, joy, sunshine, spring.

I wandered the streets of Provo, cross-eyed with bliss, ecstatic over the hyacinths and apple blossoms. If apples blossomed in California, I had no memory of it. I was in love with spring, with Provo, with myself (every healthy fifteen-year-old is secretly in love with herself, right?). I was Leisl squealing in the gazebo, and I hadn't even been kissed. I was Anne Shirley on the White Way of Delight, and I hadn't even been adopted. I was Ariel the mermaid, and I hadn't even found a fork in a sunken ship.

I think I've stomped down that fifteen-year-old springtime insanity, but I still get a teensy bit bubbly when I'm in Provo in April, whatever else is going on.