Feb 122019
 

It’s February!

This never used to be a particularly celebratory time, mind you, but I’m turning over a new leaf. Maybe I’m working off a comparison chart. December isn’t particularly joyous to me. The days are short, the energy manic. It’s cold. I hate the cold. I don’t have a holiday tradition—Christmas with the family or some such thing. Nor am I a big fan of January. Same as above but without the slight boost holiday lights offer.

But this month! Short but with more daylight. Clearly the gateway to spring, at least if the clothing catalogues piled into my mailbox are any indication. Robins sit fat and plump on the brown grass and try out their best warbles. And while Valentine’s Day is minimally uncomfortable and even a little… sad for the uncoupled of the world, well, pet love is absolutely a thing.

I admit I’ve been energized by an unexpected spate of warm weather accompanied by the sun, which has been all too scarce this winter. The thermometer climbed past sixty and stayed there—not your grandmother’s winter thaw. My neighbors were out in force, blinking at the pale sun or madly engaging in activities like roller-blading, running, strolling, or kicking and throwing balls. I swear I saw someone in his garden. Of course, we plunged back into the cold because, well, extreme weather is the new normal. Not for long, though. As you read this, temperatures are climbing again.

February holidaysFor such a diminutive month, February features a number of holidays and festivals of varied significance. Did you know February is National Cherry month? Chinese New Year occurs in February this year,  although Fat Tuesday does not. We always begin with Groundhog Day, which seems more meaningful in those parts of the country besieged by extreme weather. Never mind it’s unreasonable to expect a rodent to perform as a meteorologist. Honestly, it doesn’t make sense that we’d greet the sun with an “oh no, six more weeks of winter!” just because some little creature is afraid of his shadow. Talk about seeing the glass as half empty!

We also celebrate Black History month and Presidents’ Day. In the first instance, we set aside a month to remember pieces of history we ought to be celebrating all year round. In the second instance, we randomly meld together the birth dates of two American presidents we consider great, although I wonder if many people under forty knows which two presidents we celebrate—or can name any of the others.

Then there’s Valentine’s Day, whose origin story remains murky. The Catholic Church acknowledges three different martyred souls named Valentine. One was a third century priest who arranged for young lovers to wed in secret. In doing so, he defied the Emperor Claudius II, who figured single young men made better soldiers. Another Valentine apparently helped Christians escape the Roman prisons. That Valentine was subsequently jailed and may or may not have written a note signed “from your Valentine.” Heroic and romantic. Sigh.

John Wick and beagleValentine’s Day seems to have replaced a rather pagan fertility celebration that involved the sacrifice of both a goat and a dog. Now it’s a multi-billion-dollar business that involves reams of paper and toys with the affections of millions. Nevertheless, I’m sure we all agree that exchanging cards is better than blood-letting an animal we’d prefer to see bouncing around on YouTube in pajamas or nuzzling a baby or a cat. In fact, most of us in 2019 would go all John Wick on anyone who hurt a dog.

Speaking of movies: February is a bit of a no-man’s land in terms of sports and entertainment. The Super Bowl and the Golden Globes are both past, leaving only the Oscars, Grammys, and a couple of talent and strength competitions that compete for “most dreadful.” On the other hand, the networks bring back our favorite shows and Netflix continues to pile on the programming.

Molly and me chillinAnd nothing beats reading. After wading through three books I disliked so much I won’t mention them, I read three books in a row I really enjoyed, including an extraordinary science fiction novel and Nebula award winner in 2016 (The Fifth Season by N.K. Nemesin), a lyrical 2018 best seller (Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Ownes) and an important non-fiction read that manages to be uplifting despite its painful subject matter (Parkland by David Cullen). Even better, I read these absorbing books in front of the fireplace with the dog curled in my lap.

That’s the best kind of February.

Mar 132017
 

Spring is just around the corner; can’t you tell? Okay, may not if you’re living in much of the United States north of Florida and west of California. Ten days before the official start of spring, the temperatures can’t get out of the twenties and more than a foot of snow is predicted. Forecasters promise a colder and wetter than usual season.

Absent weather that conforms to a recognizable pattern, we proceed by sensation. It feels like spring is close at hand and not just because the calendar says so. We have more hours of daylight. Here and there, a bud or a birdsong suggests we are done with hibernating, no matter what the thermometer says.

Spring it is, then, and with it, a chance for renewal, reinvention, rebirth, redo.

Sorry, not that last one. Though we’ve been pummeled and punished by the toxic sludge stirred up by the election of 2016 (wherein violence seems to have been given a permission slip to run amok) or by life in general, we know there are no mulligans. We can’t rewind to our twenty-first birthday or even to last year, much as we might wish to. We can’t do over; we can only do again, maybe better.

What does “better” mean? I ponder this every March, which, by the way, is my personal new year. Not for me the man-made calendars or cultural/religious constructs that have us repenting or resolving in September or January. My rhythms derive from Mother Nature. If I could sleep from December through February, I would. If I could live the other nine months with nothing but naps, I would do that as well.

I engage in what I call psychic spring cleaning. My physical health is something I attend to seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. Mental health, though, can always use a reboot, never more so than this year. So I’ve joined a group so I can attend get-togethers, meet with new people and feel connected.

The real adjustment I’ve had to make involves my attitude. Like many of my friends, I’ve lived these last four months alternating between anxiety and anger. Each is a natural default position for me and neither produces anything constructive. Thus, I’ve taken on a set of activities that allow for civic involvement rather than simply online venting. Thus, I’ve renewed my attention to charities that supersede politics and target groups that are chronically in need. Thus, I check in on my neighbors and practice my customized version of gratitude.

There’s also this: my birthday is in the spring. It’s been years since I’ve looked forward to it. From the moment I crossed what is by any measure the halfway mark of my lifespan, I saw myself as in countdown mode. That’s a formidable shadow to shake off and each year it becomes a little more challenging.

Which is why each spring I emerge, determined to fight my impulse to stay hunkered down and folded in. If I open my eyes, I see there are places I’m still needed and ways in which I can still be helpful. Sometimes I have to push extra hard to prove my worth in this youth and resume-oriented world. And yes, sometimes it’s a struggle to rise to the occasion or even rise up out of my comfortable chair. But the times demand it. So does a life repurposed, renewed and rebooted.