I stood at the window near the stairwell this morning, sipping slow coffee and watching the monotones of a winter recently retired reemerge in the faces of colleagues around me. High above, a tired sun tried to break through muddy gray clouds without consequence, and pedestrians travelled about their way, unhurried. Midtown was, as midtown sometimes is, embattled in melancholy.
It's a curious thing the change of seasons, what with moody days and fickle weather, one day summerlike, the next day impressively not, and all other days undecidedly somewhere in between. Every night for the past few weeks, the Empire State Building has been dressed in the colours of spring, white and yellow like the dogwood blossoms and potted daffodils on Park Avenue. Sunday's warmth coaxed shorts and grins from closets and faces, but yesterday's rains and winds brought little more than somber umbrellas and disconnected half-smiles, everyone dismissing with a detached Ah, Monday. It's chilly today, and faces are tired from the temperamental changes. I am tired, too. The loss of an hour over the weekend seems to have not helped, this peculiar thing called daylight savings when we invest into our time banks an hour to be stored precious and safe over summer, gathering interest by the minute and saved for the winter months.
I'm sipping on an afternoon coffee now, and I look outside to see blue skies and a sudden sunshine. I am pleasantly surprised, and I notice that the mood in the office has lifted. People are more energized, faces are smiling, conversations are again engaged. Spring, it seems, is once again upon us.
