Full Camera Roll

By Rachel Metzger

I was raised by springs that fell through the crack between winter and summer, a season symbolized only by the events that rendered its yearly timing: Passover Seders with my family over spring break, preparation for finals, a class trip I had been eagerly anticipating. It’s always “spring” in southern California—rarely is the stretch between warm, breezy days long enough to constitute any form of winter. Flowers, the beach, and consistently somewhat-strong UV rays live year-round in my West Coast origins.

The wide-eyed Los Angeleno—or another West Coast hometown of your preference—ogling at her first fall leaves is a tease-worthy cliché (one that I personally express in the excessive amount of time I spend every fall semester standing at the base of trees with my phone camera out and my mouth wide open). But as spring begins to blossom in these coming weeks of long, green, sunny days, the impending flowers and final hurrahs of a Brown semester stir in me an eagerness more long-term than the temporality of changing leaves. Or maybe just the reality of seasons is exciting in that it is cyclical, and I can only resolve to continue to uphold the clichés…and to always have a camera roll that pushes the limits of my storage plan.

memory coupons

By Elijah Puente

Thankfully, these priceless coupons never expire.

I never considered myself very aggressive, but growing up, one Sunday every year, my primal instincts kicked in. My cousins and I instantly became competitors as we battled to secure the most eggs, filled with either money or coupons valid for future memories with our grandparents.

Everyone agreed the coupons were much more valuable. They ranged from a sleepover accompanied by Dairy Queen to a lunch at IHOP (my grandma’s favorite restaurant, where she always orders New York Cheesecake pancakes). Every Spring, I watched in excitement as my grandma organized everyone’s notes in a row and recorded who got which coupon on her signature yellow notepad. 

These same yellow papers lined her house, reminding her of every part of her daily routine. Seeing them meant I was somewhere loving and comfortable. That’s why the coupons meant so much. They ensured I would spend plenty of time surrounded by these notes throughout the summer—times I would cherish and reminisce about for the rest of my life.

April Come She Will

By Klara Davidson-Schmich

In Florida, there are no seasons. It's hotter in July than it is in January, but only barely, and the humidity is as familiar as the mosquitoes. Maybe that’s why seasons in Providence feel like such a revelation.

Each spring semester, you wait with bated breath for the first lovely day, convinced that winter will stretch into March, April, May. Nervous that it'll be gray and rainy forever. Nervous that the Grad D walkway will remain flooded until you move out. Nervous that spring is a daydream, a New England myth that you made up. 

But you didn’t. The snow remembers to melt, the flowers remember to bloom, and you emerge one day to people sprawled on the Blue Room steps, soaking in the extra hour of sun.

Like a friend you haven’t seen in a while, like a pair of perfectly broken-in shoes, like a hand in yours, spring slips back into place and it fits perfectly. 

You breathe a sigh of relief, of contentment. “I’m back,” spring whispers, as you step outside and the breeze kisses your forehead. “I remembered.”

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By Daniella Coyle

That weekend, the snow melted across New England into an irregular coat of crystalline water. Drops of it, falling off rooftop gutters, congregated into rivulets on the way down into the gasping pavement, quenching the bare bushes with outstretched limbs. Streaming out from the mounds on the sidewalk, the snow troubled the roads in reactionary sprays to unsuspecting car wheels, and lapped over the concrete divots. The first buds were seen on the trees, and birdsong loudened each morning. Sun shone unhindered and close, with the remnants of winter relenting slowly to the scented foreshadow of spring. 

Inside one house, I looked out the window onto what was still, as a child, a world to me: my backyard. Sunshine peeled the slush-tinged white back, and from underneath a new green surface peered. I stepped out barefoot and dodged the remaining snow patches, feeling the fresh wet grass squish and ooze, alive. I began to notice the things that were recently buried and newly emerged: sticks and shriveled leaves, indestructible shards of grass, rocks, a baseball I had thrown with my sister the previous summer and left out, a small bracelet my friend gave me once as a gift, which must have fallen off unnoticed, a red colored pencil, a lucky penny. Things I had seen before.

From their time resting frozen beneath feet of snow, they were icy wet. But now here they were, shining under the warm sun, and I was back to the places and people with whom I made those memories. Springtime, as it turns out, is not simply about change, but the discovery of what to return to.