Hibernating Columbus leaves its cave

I've never known a town so stir crazy when winter's cocoon cracks and its residents can finally roam again.

Any inkling of 50-60 degree temperatures, and the city roars to life, as if some long, demoralizing conflict has at last been signed away in treaty.

Children swarmed, locusts of the playgrounds; everytime I passed a park, the swings and slides bowed from a capacity crowd. Rarely will the crowds swell so large in neighborhood parks, even during summer vacation. There's something special about the first sunny day that cannot be cloned in June.

And finally, the porch party made its triumphant return to town, wiping away from the occupation enforced by single-digit highs.

In only a few hours on second-floor porch next to a busy glide path for bats, the feelings that winter seeks to crush now crawl away from their shallow grave and live again.

Today, the rain pounds away, and the Chicken Littles of television news already strut and cluck about rumors of snow by week's end, possible in time to give us a white St. Pat's Day (or as I have to call it in Melissa's presence, the day after Friday).

But a little taste of late spring will sate this body through the next visit from winter.