April is often the most beautiful time of the year in the Carolinas. WFAE’s Tommy Tomlinson, in his On My Mind commentary, is ready to spend it in one particular place.
It’s finally porch weather.
Usually that happens by the middle of March, but this year we got one more shock of cold rain in early April. But now, here in the Carolinas, you can stash the winter coats and wipe down the outdoor furniture. It’s time to sit outside.
One year, on vacation, we ended up in Dublin, Ireland, in June. It had just gotten warm there after six months of misery. Bars dragged their chairs out on the sidewalk. Everybody wore shorts and men walked around shirtless. Everywhere you looked there were acres of pale Irish skin. The headline in the newspaper said something like HEAT WAVE TAKES OVER DUBLIN.
We converted the Celsius to Fahrenheit. It was 75 degrees.
In the South, that’s a perfect spring day. So we go out on the porch and lean into the sun like flowers looking for nourishment.
There’s a reason, I think, why Southerners are more naturally social, why we say hey to each other on the street, why we’re known for our storytelling. It’s what I call the Crazy Aunt Theory. In other parts of the country, if you had a crazy aunt, you could just stick her up in the attic. But in the South, it’s too hot up there. So you put her out on the porch. And people talk to her, because they know she’s going to talk to them.
(This is also why some other folks think of the South as eccentric. We’re no more eccentric than anywhere else. We just display our eccentricity outdoors, like yard art.)
Our street is filled with joggers and dog-walkers and bicyclists and kids on skateboards. But people still stop to chat, usually about nothing in particular. That small talk is the WD-40 that keeps the neighborhood running smooth. And when it’s so perfect outside, the neighbors linger.
These few weeks, before the thermometer hits 90 and the skeeters arrive, are about as good as it gets — here or anywhere.
We don’t tend to live our lives by the seasons anymore. We’re chained to the clock of the workday or the deadlines on the calendar, so much so that a whole sweet spring can slip right by us. We might not even notice the angle of the sun, the sound of the bees, the darkness slowly backing away.
There’s only so many days of porch weather. We only get so many springs. Don’t let this one pass you by.
Tommy Tomlinson’s "On My Mind" column runs Mondays on WFAE and WFAE.org. It represents his opinion, not the opinion of WFAE. You can respond to this column in the comments section below. You can also email Tommy at ttomlinson@wfae.org.