Spring's bloom tops the doom

OK, let’s take inventory ...

The stock market is careening up and down like a deranged bungee jumper. Banks have gone in the tank, General Motors is shrinking faster than the Antarctic ice shelf and several big city newspapers have met their final deadlines.

Meanwhile, over in the wild, wild Middle East, suicide bombers have cranked up again in Iraq and the Taliban is making gains in nuclear-armed Pakistan, which means they will eventually come over here and blow up New Jersey.

And on top of all that, I got a call from my mom the other night expressing concern about a recent bout of illness.

“Do you think you might have had the swine flu?” she asked.

Enough, already. It’s spring, and thank God for it.

I don’t know about you, but I always draw a deep breath of optimism from the arrival of this new season. (And then I start sneezing from the pollen, but that’s another story).

Spring always happens, regardless. It has nothing to do with the Federal Reserve System, the state of Wall Street or who happens to be in the White House. It’s an article of faith, a given, and when the trees do their annual striptease in late November, there is never any doubt in the public mind that they will be clothed again in a few months.

Even global warming hasn’t taken spring away from us yet. I didn’t see any polls over the winter asking people if they thought the leaves would be back. We just know.

Moreover, spring invites us to shift our attention away from all those dire things over which we have no control and back into our front yards.

Here are just a few reasons to be happy this time of year, despite what the purveyors of gloom on the TV news networks would have you believe.

1. The new leaves cover up all the ugly places we’ve had to look at for the past four or five months.

2. We get a blissful — if short — window of opportunity between turning off the heat and turning on the air conditioning.

3. Our decks become welcoming places again.

4. We can think about starting a garden, even if we don’t get around to it.

5. The Hillcats are in first place.

6. Friday Cheers is just over the horizon.

7. We can all start wearing shorts again, whether we look good in them or not.

8. School kids can almost smell summer vacation from here.

9. We can eat our lunches outdoors.

10. A forecast for precipitation is no longer cause for panic, unless you have a golf game planned.

I watched the national news the other night and found myself sucked into a downward spiral that started with the wilting economy and moved on to unemployed auto workers, the Taliban, global warming, birds hitting airplanes and wildfires in, of all places, Myrtle Beach. When it was all over, ABC anchor Charles Gibson smiled and said: “I hope you had a wonderful day.”

Actually, Charles, I did. No amount of bad news can spoil spring.