My students are arguing again, as we do every spring — even if we’re doing it on Zoom and Google Docs. Today we had a (very capable and funny) argument in favor of winter as the better season over summer. I didn’t get a volunteer  to respond to it, so I challenged all of them to write their own response. Here’s mine.

 

 

What’s the best season?

Hmm. Tough call. Because there’s something in every season that is good: winter is the best because cold is better than hot, because fresh snowfall is pristinely, sparklingly beautiful, because the clothes are more fun to wear, and because the holidays are better. But spring is the best because everything comes to life and bursts in bright colors as the last gray, crusty snow melts away, because the new music and new books start to come out hoping to be the big summer thing, because the sports world is exploding with NBA and NHL finals and the start of the baseball and soccer seasons and NFL Draft Day, and because Easter has the best candy (because Cadbury is the best candy in all the world AND I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL AND TAKE ALL OF YOU WITH ME). But summer is clearly better than any other season for one simple reason: no school. Vacations and long lazy days, ice cream and iced coffee and watermelon and swimming to break the heat, summer concerts and blockbuster movies – and, while we’re talking about this stuff, let me point out that scientists expect summer will help break the Covid-19 pandemic, because viruses tend to spread more in winter as people are trapped inside in close quarters with each other, so summer is the healthiest time, and I think we could all use that right now. But then autumn comes in with fall foliage and crisp winds, monsoons and rainy days indoors and the return of cool nights, Thanksgiving and Halloween, the World Series and the World Cup and the start of all the other sports, and the final death of allergy season, hurricane season, and wildfire season.

You know what? I can’t choose. I could make an argument for, or against, any season. I’ve lived in four major regions in my life, and they all had their best season: here in Tucson it’s clearly winter that shines, because the weather is perfect; in California spring is the greenest and best time; in Oregon summer is the only time that doesn’t suck; and in Massachusetts, autumn is the most beautiful season of all. And also, Tucson summers are sun-baked hell, Oregon winters are gray-skied muddy hell, Massachusetts springtime is schizophrenic weather hell where I’ve literally worn a t-shirt one day and had school canceled for snow the next, and California fall is – actually, it’s still not that bad. Though autumn is usually when the whole state catches on fire.

I’ve loved every season, and dreaded every season. In fact, every season has something to look forward to, and something we can’t wait to escape. Every season has something we hope to cut short and something we hope to stretch out. Every season has good weather and bad weather, good events and bad events, improvements and declines…

I got it. I know what the answer is.

The best season is – change.

Every season is best when it’s new. And every one gets terrible before it finally gets dragged away, kicking and screaming, by the heroic arrival of the new season. The seasons, all of them, are too long, and give us too much of a good thing. (Even Cadbury crème eggs. I fully admit I have too many of them. Though the answer there is to stock up while they’re available, and then space them out as long as possible. I’ve made them last until the New Year.) Every season is made better by its contrast to the other seasons.

And this is true no matter where you are. Here in Tucson, summer is best right when it starts, right when school gets out and the real death heat hasn’t started yet; and it’s best then because we’re so sick of school, and we’re not yet tired of the heat. Autumn is best when the rains wash the pollen and dust out of the air, and the death heat finally breaks; and before psychopaths make us want to set the world on fire before we have to listen to ONE MORE CHRISTMAS CAROL or HEAR ONE MORE ARGUMENT ABOUT HOW HALLOWEEN IS THE BEST HOLIDAY or see ONE MORE MEME ABOUT GODDAMN PUMPKIN SPICE. (You know who you are, all of you.) Winter is best because we’re ready for the holidays and the cool weather, which comes right at the start of winter; but by February, we’re tired of being cold, and of having the flu, and we’re ready for spring and t-shirt time. Spring is – well, this has not been a good spring, so it doesn’t work too well to argue for the positive aspects of spring right now; spring is clearly Coronavirus season, and there ain’t nothing good about that. But normally spring is a relief, until it gets to be too much, and we just can’t wait for summer to start. I could do the same thing with every place that I have lived: I have longed for every new season to start, been relieved and happy when it finally gets here – and then grown tired of it and hoped for yet another new season to save me from the current one.

I think the real answer is this: the future is better than the past, and change is better than stasis. Even if we are traditionalists – and I love watching the same Christmas movies every year, and every last day of school I blast “School’s Out” by Alice Cooper as I drive away from work for the last time, and I will dress as a pirate for every Halloween for the rest of my life if I can – we still prefer looking forward to when that happy tradition can come around again, and we are sad when it passes and we have to look back on it. So the best thing we can do is look forward to what is coming, and the worst thing we can do is look back on what has hung around too long.

The best season is the next one. And I can’t wait.