Dear Minnesota Summers,

According to my calendar, you don’t officially begin until June 20, but in my books, you started the day I finished my school year. Your arrival means freedom from books and homework and late-night study sessions. It means the time for days at the lake and bonfires have come. But this year, you are making it hard for me to embrace those annual summer rituals.

Just the other day, we had snow. Not rain, not hail, but snow. Snow in May. I wish I could say this was the first time you had done this to us Minnesotans up north, but it’s not. In fact, I’ve come to expect it now. It’s all rather sad, if you think about it.

So, instead of sipping icy drinks and lounging in the sun to work on my summer tan, I’m making hot chocolate and bringing in firewood for fires in the house. And instead of waking up to the beautiful birdsong in the trees outside my bedroom, I am awoken by the chill of a cold room and the silence of birds trying to stay warm on a cloudy and cold May morning.

I know that there are still many students who don’t finish school for another three or four weeks, but even so, May is usually a part of spring. And spring is not supposed to involve snow and temperatures in the 30s at night. This weather might make it easier for those still in school to be inside all day, but for those of us who finally have our freedom, we want our warm weather now.

There are some who say that unless we experience life without the things we want most, we wouldn’t know what we are missing. Without the past summers of sun and warmth to think on, this year’s summer would not seem to be off to such a rough start to me. As twisted as it sounds, there is definitely a part of me that is happy to have this cold right now. After all, the sun will just be that much warmer when it finally shows its face in a week — or a month — and finally officiates the true beginning of this warmest time of the year.