Aileen Santiago

The scent of spring is jarring. I smell it in the breeze of the first 50-degree day last week — it connotes bright buds popping up from the ground, a coolness that requires only a jacket and strong, warm sunshine, no longer wintry and weak. 

But more than that, it brings back the spring of 2020.

It disorients me to associate spring, something so invigorating, with the suffocation of COVID-19. That spring, I spent hours sitting at my desk in my room. My orange walls and ceiling light created an artificial brightness and boxed me in. The pictures and posters on my walls, which I loved, became tall and looming. But at my desk, doing random schoolwork that my teachers probably didn’t grade and writing short stories and poems to keep myself occupied, at least I could sit in front of an open window. Pollen lightly dusted the surface of my desk after a couple weeks, but it was worth it, for the moist freshness of spring to drift in.

It reminded me that there was more to the world than my computer — which was now propped up on a Torah commentary I received for my Bat Mitzvah because my desk was too low. Earth expanded beyond the confines of my house, beyond my kitchen where my mom and I sat in the morning, beyond the living room where we set up a card table to do puzzles (we finished pictures of Cuba, Paris and Shakespearean England).

I went for long walks during COVID-19, but even as I roamed my suburban neighborhood, watching the trees grow greener and flowers start to bloom, I was trapped, distanced by the “six feet” we all knew so well. Breathing the clean air in deeply, I escaped just a little bit, to somewhere I could spread my arms without knocking into a wall.

COVID-19 isn’t my only association with spring, though. In high school, I began to connect it with the tennis season. Beginning in mid-March, we trekked down the hill to the courts after school. Though sometimes we were still shivering and bundled up, the sun hit us and we quickly shed our layers and started debating whose sock tan line would be the worst of the season.

Tennis freed me, allowed me to burn off the frustrations of the school day while laughing with my teammates about the balls that the boys’ team — mostly by accident — launched into the woods behind our courts. Tucked behind the school baseball field, we existed in our own world, complete with just five green courts lined up next to each other.

As the days got longer, we played longer, until the sun started to set. The sky grew orange, then bruised and purple. Our voices echoed against the courts, our shoes squeaked and a sweet breeze rustled the trees around us. I breathed in and knew I could spread my arms without crashing into any walls.

And when I start to feel spring at Yale now, in my freshman year, it reminds me of just last April, when I visited for Bulldog Days. For a few hectic days and nights, I rushed around with whichever new people I just met, everyone grabbing the cliche but quintessential picture of spring blossoms against some Gothic building. So much was new and exciting — spring held fervor and energy.

It perplexes me that spring holds such contradictory meanings — simultaneously reminding me of claustrophobia, contentment and excitement. Emotions and memories wash over me as the days inch warmer and stay light a minute later, and I wonder what spring will mean to me in five years. Once I’ve graduated, and probably gone from New Haven, will I feel a spring breeze brush against me and think of these days in 2025? Will I think of rushed walks up Hillhouse Avenue, nearly late to Econ every week? Or late night walks back to my suite, looking up at the sky, scrubbing homework from my mind. 

Or maybe I’ll think of my fifth-floor shoebox bedroom with New Yorker covers and postcards plastered to the walls. Though my curtains are always closed to keep the light out, my window is already open. Each night, fresh air wafts in. I breathe deeply and wait to fall asleep, my head only inches away from the open and infinite spring night.