Dear Mrsatroxi,

Last night I did something I have never ever done during my tenure on this earth.

(Brain out of the gutter, folks. Thankyou.)

I made hamburgers.

I should say that I do enjoy cooking, and yes, I actually do it often. It’s just never tended towards the chopped meat end of the spectrum. And it’s all my Mother’s fault.

You see, growing up, we had hamburgers, well, a lot. My Mother, lovely person though she is, can be a bit, um, neurotic. She could not, can not, tolerate the touch of raw meat, so hamburgers in our house were always just a square of ground beef chopped out of a package with much grimacing and shuddering, then plopped in a frying pan and cooked until charred hard. Pepper if she could stand it. My Grandmother used to make lovely fresh burgers, butchered from their own cows, and those I could eat. But stamped still glowing into my memory is the shuddering and the toughness and the char.

I’ve hated hamburgers for as long as I could remember.

I even inherited a hatred of raw meat. In fact, for the first two years or so of married life, I could not eat any of my cooking. I’d sit down to dinner, and the image of a raw chicken breast or giblets would float in front of me, and that would end my appetite for hours. Which is so reassuring to those you happen to have prepared the meal for. “Why aren’t you eating?” “I just can’t. It’s making me sick. THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH IT, I SWEAR.” Eventually, probably though medication, I just got over it.

Well, times are lean in this neck of the woods, and hamburger is cheap-ish. And if I make one more meatloaf or goulash I’m going to scream. So, I bit the bullet and made them. Little patties I squished out with my bare hands, full of egg and seasonings and cream that I cooked very carefully over slow heat so they’d stay juicy.

And you know what?

I still hate hamburgers.

I love the Spring. The buds, the tiny leaves, the smell in the air. It’s kind of a fragile, tremulous season with an electrical undercurrent.

Every year, since I reached a certain age, I feel as though I miss it. I’m too busy with working, or taking care of the house or crap that I blink, it’s started and then blink it’s over.

Oh, I know that’s exaggeration. Of course I don’t miss every single day, of course I get a handful of days to spend outside. That doesn’t matter, my brain is telling me I missed it, and it’s right. Essentially, I did.

So, there is one thing, one of many things, (but the one I want right now) I want before I die. Before I’m “too old”.

I want one more Spring. One Spring where I can roll around in the dirt and make mud pies, sit and watch a flower open, listen to the birds start their operas, get covered in bug bites and burn the back of my neck in the sun.

I don’t want to be a kid again.

I just want that one last Spring.