The Barometer
Twilight
Between day and night, winter and summer, between being a child and being an adult, there is a twilight.
During the ‘tween years—the earliest raw teens—between the hours of after-school and supper-time, especially in the earliest raw spring, there is a Twilight Zone of possibilities.
It is bright and warm in the morning, so a girl can get away with a light spring jacket on the walk to school: “Bye, Mom!” and scamper off parka-free. Light as a feather, with runners on her quick feet, not heavy boots.
There might be puddles or light rain, but they are not frozen solid or freezing, they are springy sprinkles or splashes. If the puddles are icy, it is only superficially clear and thin like windows. Feel free to pick up a sliver and SMASH it to the pavement: who would complain? It is destruction without consequences, any crime melted by noon.
Then, after school, it is not dark and cold, it is still sunny and warm. A girl, or a gaggle of girls, might walk slowly, they might walk with boys. I mean, there might be boys there, walking.
Boys from her class, or boys from the other class, or boys one year ahead, or because it is earliest spring, boys a year younger. Not dark-ice running boys, pelting snow, wreaking havoc, showing off. Not a pack of stone-in-snowball-throwing hooligans.
Not babes or chicks or anything other than humans who are female and quite young. And not the shrill, sharp-tongued, shrieking kind of girls.
Like the last scratchy, gravel-studded snowbanks of the winter, they have all succumbed to the mild air. The street-cleaning machines purr as warm winds blow away the puddles.
So the spring-walking boys might say something to girls, not to hurt or hurl or huck, but to converse. And because it is still light and warm they might reply in kind, and so some boys and some girls might walk together.
For those who wish to speak softly in spring, there is plenty of time; it’s not nearly supper.
Hello yourself.
Yeah, that was funny.
I saw that, too. I liked it a lot.
Where’d you get that jacket? It’s nice. Your mother? Your father shot the deer…then your mother sewed it? It’s so soft. Hey, you’re right, it does fit me.
And maybe hold hands. No, really? Well, not actually hold hands, but the hands brushed together, then walking up a hill, and so….Did you kiss? Did not! Did so! You did!
Did not!
Then the sun comes down, and it suddenly goes from bright warm to cold dark. The independent ‘tween is now a hungry kid. Supper is waiting.
Wow, it’s cold out now, eh? Gotta get home.
May I walk you?
Maybe. Will this sunshine boy turn into a night-stalker, snow-baller, mean guy? Or will he gently hold her chapped hand in his, then walk back across town all alone, on his own, in the manly dark?
This is the twilight zone, the in-between space, the I-should-call-home time versus I-am-okay time of life beyond parents.
This happens in early spring, in early adolescence, when it is okay to be out a bit, and okay to be out there a bit. When it is not quite spring but spring enough.
And maybe she will decide to sprint the last block home, like a colt, leaving Young Mister amazed. Then her feet tingle, taking off those damp and dusty running shoes, and it feels so good to sit down to supper in the gleam of the dinner table at night in the early spring.
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