New York City, March 30, 2016

★★★ The dance of the coats — back now to the big puffy ones for the kids — was more tolerable with the returning cold in spring than it had been with the endless incursions of warmth into winter. It was bright, plenty bright, for the school dropoff, but why walk on to the coffee shop when there was tea to make at home? Pear blossoms were a floating wall of white on Columbus Avenue. A sweater felt burdensome, yet the shade was deep and chilly. Kids grappled and scuffled in the sun-struck bare concrete on the back side of their high school. One tree in the block of fast-food places on Amsterdam had ventured into leaf and bloom, while cold wind still blew through the bare and trash-clogged branches of its fellows. The blooming tree had its share of trash in it, too.