April 18--Are you happy now?
No, not just happy -- on delicious, teasing days of early spring, are you giddy, euphoric, rapturous?
Does the sun pouring down onto newly blossomed flowers fill you with ecstasy? Do warm afternoons send you outdoors and into transports of delight?
Friends, let us stop skipping down the street for a moment and give thanks for our spring happiness to where thanks are due:
Winter.
Wait, come back! Hear me out on this.
You may not want to think about winter right now. You may want to forget about the cold and ice. You may want to ritually disembowel your snow shovel and set your big ugly parka on fire.
But friends, it is winter that has brought us all this delight.
I try not to speak too ill of winter; my ongoing campaign to try to keep a positive mental attitude toward the season is fragile and requires constant vigilance.
Still, the reality is that by the end of winter, many of us are dragging ourselves through those last weeks with our positive attitudes running on fumes.
But give this to winter: It makes us truly, deeply treasure spring.
Is there anyone as happy as a Chicagoan in spring? When the first warm days arrive, we hurtle outdoors, tearing off our coats, almost speechless with delight. We are enchanted at the soft breezes, ecstatic at the almost summery afternoons.
And it's in large part because of winter.
Spring feels so good because it comes after a season that often feels so bad. We wouldn't be kicking up our heels if we hadn't just spent months shoveling our walks.
It is winter that turns us dizzy with joy on the first summerlike day; winter that has us hurrying outside spring mornings lest we miss a moment; winter that fuels our love affair with outdoor cafes.
We should count ourselves lucky to have long, miserable, frigid, bitter --
Oops.
I mean, we should count ourselves lucky to have winter, which bequeaths us such happiness in spring.
Pity the poor Floridians, who don't spend warm days walking around with dazed looks on their faces and saying to their neighbors, "Can you believe this?"
Weep for your friends in San Diego, who don't call a 75-degree afternoon unbelievable, but say, Tuesday.
They have no conception of our bliss, as is clear if you have ever seen the looks on locals' faces if you take a winter vacation in a warm climate, walk out of the airport and started shrieking, "Oh my god, this is incredible!"
Year-round warm-weather people don't text their friends, "I'm wearing a T-shirt and shorts!" They don't end emails with, "Enjoy the fabulous weather!" or "Go outside! Now!"
Poor things.
But happy us.
Look what we get in spring, courtesy in part to winter:
A walk down the block becomes an event; a lunch-hour stroll, a treat so delicious we can hardly bear to go back inside.
We smile at strangers. We gather outdoors with our neighbors. We juggle our schedules, because suddenly it makes perfect sense to cancel a meeting to go outside and celebrate being alive.
We listen to the sounds of birds. We notice the shade of green in new leaves. We revel in the feel of a warm breeze on our finally uncovered arms.
And when we finally have to go back inside, we do it as reluctantly as a child called home on a summer evening.
There are wonders around us all year. But when we emerge from winter into spring, the contrast is so sharp and sweet that we pay full, joyous attention. The trees and flowers are coming back to life, and so, in a way, are we.
So as we put our down coats and snow boots into storage, we might consider acknowledging our debt to winter.
Our delight at spring flowers, our happiness at the air's sweetness, our extra measure of pleasure in the unfurling of trees and the buzzing of bees -- we owe it partly to February.
I plan to remind myself of that next February.
Meanwhile, out we go, friends. We paid our dues all winter; now winter is giving us our reward.
Let's go collect it.
----For those who have followed my columns about Irv and Carlyn Ungar, the North Side couple who celebrated their 75th wedding anniversary in 2013 and then were parted by Carlyn's death at the age of 100, it is a love story that has now come to its full end.
Irv Ungar died Thursday at 101, peacefully, at home.
He had missed Carlyn deeply, his children said, and spoke of still turning to ask her what he should wear or what they would be doing that day. But he had started new activities, made new friends and gone on.
"They had a wonderful marriage," said their daughter, Carol Ungar. "I'm sure that through 76 years they had moments where, had it been 100 years later or 50 years later, maybe they would have thought different things. But they didn't. They hung in there, and you know what? The bad things passed, and you remember the good things."
"They lived long, wonderful lives, and up until the last couple of years they were really living life to its fullest," said their son, Ed Ungar.
And as for their thoughts on three-quarters of a century of marriage, "I think Mom said it best when she said each party in the marriage had to give 60 percent; that 50/50 wasn't quite good enough," he said.
It was a good lesson; theirs were rich lives, and we who got to hear their love story were lucky.
blbrotman@tribpub.com
