April Showers Bring May Flowers – The Canadian Conversation

I hope you all had a very happy Easter! We had a lot of fun around the house despite the fact that it rained all weekend. The kids put on their rain gear and trudged out into the forest anyway to see what the Easter bunny had left for them. We even managed to get out for a hike one morning when the clouds cleared. But, although we made the best of it, I admit that we did grumble a bit about the weather. At one point, one of my daughters asked the group to dig into our collective memory to figure out how often Easter is a "nice" weekend. We came to the conclusion that it is sunny just often enough that we hope for it, but that more often than not, come Easter time, we haven't put away our winter boots yet. And maybe that's just fine. You need a bit of rain to really appreciate the sun.

Also, in this family, you need a little "weather" to set the scene for any story and to track the seasons of your life. As some of you may know, Don is a Winnipeg-boy, and he grew up with very distinct and drastically different seasons. His childhood was one of bitterly cold and windy winters and stinking hot summers. And I've noticed that for the Winnipeg side of our family, in particular, the weather is a matter of keen interest!

Don and I call his Winnipeg family almost every Sunday and, without exception, every conversation begins with a detailed description of the weather and a comparison of the weather on Salt Spring and in Winnipeg. Although some people might think there is more "weather" in Winnipeg, this West Coast side of the family always has a lot to say too. Sometimes Don misses the crisp but bright Winnipeg winters of his childhood and I think the grey, damp BC winters took some getting used to.

But even so, it seems that the topic of weather endures. We go from the rain, the wet, the cold, the gloom, the snow, the hail, the sleet, the windstorm, the atmospheric river, the floods, and then all of a sudden (but briefly) it seems we talk a lot about the heat, the humidity, the drought, the UV index, and then before you know it, we are back to the cold, the rain, the snow. This just might be an "our family thing," but I suspect it's really a Canadian thing.

We used to visit a small town on the Pacific coast of Mexico and I still have this town on my weather app. Every time I look it up, the weather is 28 degrees Celsius and sunny. I sometimes wonder whether I would talk about the weather quite so much if I lived there. Would I wake up and exclaim every morning, "Oh, it's 28 and sunny!"? I have a feeling it wouldn't be such an event.

But up here in Canada, I think the conversation is inevitable. Just the other day on Saltspring it went from warm, Springtime weather to hail and back again in the same day! Impossible not to tell you about!

And even though it's officially Spring - and I admit, I'm ready for the sun - I'm trying to remember that old adage: April showers bring May flowers! And since I LOVE flowers, I'm just putting on my raincoat and rainboots, and feeling grateful that I had some exciting news to share with my family this Sunday!

With love,

Suzanne xo