POV: Spring.

POV ("point of view") is a series that addresses many of the same themes covered in my Equals Record column: growing up, saying yes to adventure, learning to embrace a quarter-life crisis. Each POV entry will include a photograph and a short reflection based on what’s pictured. While my previous column focused largely on ideas, POV focuses on moments - glimpses, glances, tiny stories. 

Last year, on the first day of spring, my friends and I cut our hair. It seemed like an appropriate way to bid farewell to winter and to greet the new season - with drastic changes, ones we could see.

On the morning of this year's vernal equinox, I was in the airport in Sri Lanka, collecting my bags. Yair was waiting for me outside, breakfast in hand, and we ate papaya and mango and tiny speckled bananas on the grass as the sky brightened. I wore tights, a jacket, white tennis shoes. "We were expecting snow in New York when I left," I explained as I sweat.

As days passed, I forgot that there'd been any change in the season at all. In Sri Lanka, it always seemed to be summer. I got a sunburn. I swam in the ocean. I neglected to wash my hair for days. I got used to wearing little, to leaving my shoes behind.
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When I landed in New York a little over a week later, the windows of the plane were streaked with rain, and I took a cab home with a scarf on. "It's the winter that never ends," said my driver. Still, it wasn't freezing - not in the way it had been days earlier.

A year ago, my friends and I marked the arrival of spring with tangible changes. We felt primed for new things. Now, after an especially relentless winter, I feel a similar readiness, though the physical signs of transition are less pronounced. Still, spring is here - it's hard to tell by looking, but I know it, and I feel it. The sun is showing itself, slowly.

Yesterday afternoon, Julia, Lily, and I walked through Bushwick just for the sake of walking. It was 4PM, nearly 60 degrees, and the entire neighborhood seemed to be in the streets. Maria Hernandez Park was packed, buzzing. "Everything looks so different in sunlight," I said, and though it wasn't quite warm enough to go jacketless, we removed our layers and walked bare-armed in spite of the chill, laughing, hugging ourselves.

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You can find my previous POV entries, here, and the archive for my personal essay column on the Equals Record, here. Thank you so much, as always, for your support. Photo by Julia Robbs via my Instagram.