It may seem hard to believe, but soon the white stuff will be all gone and flowers will be everywhere. Just you wait.

I did something unusual yesterday — I stopped to smell the roses. That’s not some soppy cliché. As I was walking past the flower stalls on Terbatas Street alongside Vērmanis Park, I physically stopped and smelled the roses (well, some flowers anyway). For someone like me, this was just uncharacteristic.

What caused this abnormal behavior? The weather.

For the first time in months, I woke up to the sun directly hitting my eyes. Sunshine streaming into my apartment! And the weather outside was beautiful. I couldn’t help walking with an extra spring in my step.

Spring fever overcame me. Instead of heading directly to my office, I took a detour to walk past the flower stalls. I was going to soak up all I could from this first sign of spring.

I was particularly thankful for good weather. Imagine my annoyance at learning that I arrived in Latvia for the coldest, snowiest winter in a lifetime. Concerned friends had warned me about the Latvian winter, but I scoffed, “we have winter in the U.S. too!” But I soon came to learn that a Latvian winter is a different kind of beast. The intensity here, and the short days, made the experience a bit miserable and depressing. It certainly gave me a new insight into the Latvian experience.

Even though the official start of spring is still some time away, for me spring has sprung.

My enjoyment of the beauty of nature was short-lived, though. Not more than an hour later as I was walking home, a large chunk of ice crashed to the ground three feet in front of me. The melting snow makes the roofs slippery enough that large sheets of ice slide right off. Wary walkers are now watching their heads. I was literally seconds away from being smashed in the head by a block of ice.

What does this all mean? I’m not entirely sure, but I think it means the weather here is a mischievous tease.

For a few weeks, it’s snowed. Then melted. Then snowed. Then melted. Then snowed again. Then melted again.

Whenever I thought the weather was turning for the better, it would let me down.

Perhaps I just so desperately wanted the weather to get better, that I lost my mind a little at the first sign of improvement — and that caused me to almost lose my head.

If there is a moral to this story, it is not to stop and smell the roses (figuratively or literally). The moral would be that the hard times make the good times so much better. Let this be a metaphor for the economy, a point Ojārs Kalniņš made a few weeks ago. After a tough winter, we in Latvia deserve a nice (and early) spring. And even though economic recovery is still far off, the first signs of improvement will be welcome relief given just how horrible the financial crisis has been. But with such optimism, we still need to be careful, lest you get hit by a falling chunk of ice. But why talk about such serious matters? Go out and enjoy the weather!

Michael G. Dozler is a graduate student of international affairs who received a Fulbright research grant for study in Latvia.

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