Spring arrives in Sydney

Spring arrives in Sydney
Originally uploaded by Broken Piggy Bank.

My birthday is in September (shh... it's a secret), which, according to the neat-and-tidy need to catagorize things, means I'm an autumn/fall baby, since September is an autumn month, right? Well, according to the autumnal equinox on the American calendar, autumn doesn't begin until 22 Sep, a few days after my birthday. Hence, I'm a "summer baby" in an autumn month. Add to that confusion that I was born and raised in Corpus Christi TX, where autumn showed up at the door several months later than in the rest of the States, if it ever did at all. Very little deciduosity to mark the annual movement of the sun can one find in the Sparkling City by the Sea, yessirree!

Sep 2003 threw me for an even bigger discombobulatory loop as all that I had known surrounding September -- all that had been decided, drilled down, and indoctrinated -- now flipped upside down in Australia, because, you see, the seasons are reversed in the Southern Hemisphere, where Australia has decided to reside, post-Pangea. So, when I arrived in Sydney on 05 Sep, spring had officially begun on 01 Sep, 4 days earlier. Spring in September? Huh? Finally reconciling the summer/autumn thing in my head, I was now to believe that my birthday was in spring. Spring? The time for Easter, marshmallow Peeps, capirotada, mountain laurel, Lent, wildflowers, SXSW, college basketball, girls in tanktops --- in September? Odd. Muy odd.

Back in Austin, my birthday is once again in autumn, tho technically in summer - unlike next year, when it will be in spring, again. And, I'll have to stop telling the Kiwis that my birthday is in autumn but really in summer because they will all correct me and say "You mean, spring, eh?" and I'll have to correct myself shyly and agree with them.