I grew up in Michigan and loved springtime the best of all. Lilacs and fresh mown grass remain in my memory although it has been four decades since I have experience a northern spring until this year. I moved to Florida in 1980 - north Florida that is. There is a bit of spring - a fast blooming of azaleas, red buds, dogwoods, wisteria - and then whosh, summer hits with a vengeance. This year I am in Pittsburgh reveling the the feeling that spring will be here for a few months of prolonged intense beauty as the trees and bushes and bulbs take their time blooming - each in its season. Forsythia blooms right now - yellow bursts of sunshine on the landscape that still remains largely brown recovering from months of snow-laden burden. I see pink and red flowering trees and know I must get a guide to remember what all those blossoms are. I've forgotten so much, but memory is lifting and it begins with the birds singing loudly each morning as they fight for a perch on the bird feeder outside my living room window. I happily anticipate the lilacs of May but for now the weeping willows take me back to a childhood I now remember more clearly than ever before. The birth of spring resembles the birth of a child - once it arrives all the pain of winter disappears and life takes over making everything just a little brighter and hopeful.