There’s a silly saying we like to use in Chicago, something about there being only two (not four) seasons. “There’s winter and construction,” we’d commiserate with our neighbors.

We’d smile at the shared misery in this truth; that in our fabulous city on Lake Michigan, we tend to have winters that seemingly go on and on without end, marked by gridlock in the streets, and summers that are so hot and humid the concrete buckles and there’s a public works project under every streetlamp, also meaning gridlock on the roads.

There is, of course, another irony here, which we don’t talk about. That is that we actually have spring, but it only lasts for a week. There is usually one week of perfection, around mid-May, where everything simply blooms. Spring Week is often sandwiched between cold rains and heat waves. When the Bears start training camp in a few months, we can easily forget that we experienced this perfection at all.

For one week, everything alive and green goes berserk. Fully blossomed branches of magnolia trees fan out over residential streets brushing the tops of soccer mom driven SUVs. Grass from small lawn patches grow faster and bushier than the green faux fur of a Chia Pet.

Spring Week fills everyone with an unabashed sort of giddiness as if the world has gone skinny dipping and no one cares if grumpy old Mr. Wilson is going to tell everyone’s folks.

Spring Week is perfect in its brevity because, short though it may be, it does the job. The sudden greening and opening of nature re-charges us and re-vitalizes us. Its entrance into the cycles of our lives doesn’t come a moment too soon either. Just when we think we can’t take gray anymore, we realize we can open our windows and turn down our thermostats. We don’t have to accept gray anymore.

Its magic is potent, strong enough to shake us out of hibernation. We can find beauty in every bud, possibilities in every seedling.

But Spring Week is about more than beauty. I know that when I was walking near Horner Park the other day and saw these incredible flowering trees hanging over the sidewalk near the tennis courts, I was bowled over. When I told my friend Nick about my walk and started to describe the white to blush coloring of the petals, he finished my sentence for me.

At first I thought, he must have seen the same tree. Then I wondered maybe he saw the same type of tree. Then I realized maybe he just saw a tree the same way. With a keen appreciation for every detail you can notice in the moment and an even greater appreciation for being alive at a time when everything is coming to life, Spring invites us all to see with our hearts.

The short duration of spring doesn’t diminish its vibrancy or its rejuvenating impact on our souls.

Immersing yourself in Spring Week is no small thing.