Spring: In a tradition which pre-dates either, Christians celebrate Easter; the youngest family members making the oldest smile as grandmas and grandpas look down the church pew, watching little legs swing back and forth as they listen to the retelling of the story of the resurrection of Christ.
Jews celebrate Passover; the youngest family members making the oldest smile as grandmas and grandpas help the little ones deal with the strange words and odd cadences during the retelling of the story of the escape from Egypt.
As March makes way for April, even non-believers smile as they look at the flowering trees in full bloom, standing fragile watch over the tulips and jonquils below them; the azaleas patiently awaiting their entrance cue.
On the first of April the days are palpably longer as a warming sun alters its gait from a worried dash overhead during the Winter months to its more self-assured strut across the Spring sky.
The longer days are codified by law, as next week we will move our clocks ahead in accordance with Daylight Saving Time.
The Major League baseball season, the American game of Spring and Summer, is beginning. The heirs to those players - the Little Leaguers - spend more time outside, completely lost in the wonderful and infinitely repeatable fantasy of pretending to peer in for the sign from the pitching rubber at Yankee Stadium, or pretending to lace one into McCovey Cove in San Francisco.
This, just as the college basketball season - the American game of Winter - ends with the crowning of its champions; the 20- and 21-year-olds, upon whose shoulders the fates of great universities rest, savoring the experience of having been part of a great tradition.
Other students, starting with the youngest, will sit in their classrooms spending a bit more time each day staring out of the windows. The word "daydreaming" will be in the lips of many teachers, much more frequently starting this week.
Parents of the younger students now have to get serious about making the camp decision. High school and college seniors, who have been putting it off all Winter, now have to confront the job-or-more-school decision.
In writing this I am not, as a latter day Pollyanna Whittier, ignoring the growing horror of devastation in the Middle East.
Terrorist bombing after terrorist bombing has been reported over the past few days. Those who place blame on President Bush for not having been engaged enough, need only look back to the extraordinary activity by President Clinton in the waning days of his Administration, or to the laser focus of the Carter Administration on trying to arrange for peace. All to no avail.
The New York Times' Tom Friedman, helped us understand the intractable nature of the matter in his essay yesterday:
"The outcome of the war now under way between the Israelis and Palestinians is vital to the security of every American, and indeed, I believe, to all of civilization. Why? Quite simply because Palestinians are testing out a whole new form of warfare, using suicide bombers - strapped with dynamite and dressed as Israelis - to achieve their political aims. And it is working."
Friedman, writing about a recent statement by a Hamas terrorist said, "Palestinians have Israelis on the run now because they have found their weak spot. Jews, [the Hamas leader] said, 'love life more than any other people, and they prefer not to die.'"
Seeing a love of life as a weakness is abhorrent to the ideals upon which modern society is based. As most of the world celebrates the renewal of life, signaled by the arrival of Spring, this one statement tells us all we need to know about what we are fighting against, and why all civilized nations should join us.
On the Secret Decoder Ring page today: When Daylight Savings Time starts, how "Pollyanna" got her name, and a link to the Tom Friedman column.
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