By any objective measurements, this past winter was a rough one. While COVID hospitalizations and deaths rose and variants threatened, while insurrectionists desecrated the Capitol, while a number of regions experienced punishing weather events, while the gap between the prudent and the reckless grew and it became apparent that a sizeable portion of the population subscribed to views that seemed rooted in the 15th century or maybe outer space–while all that was happening, I watched the gargantuan pile of snow next to my house for signs of spring.
Space is at a premium in my development, and that includes space to pile the snowfall that is cleared from the driveways and courtyards. The small area between my semi-detached townhouse yearly plays host to an abominably large mound I’ve dubbed Gray Mountain. As that side of the house is shaded, the melt is slow.
Gray Mountain represents everything I hate about winter. It’s rock hard, dirty, immovable, and it seems to last forever. Every year I promise myself I’ll trust its demise to time and the elements, and every year I take out my twenty-year-old ice chopper and hack away at it.
This winter, scarcely a year after my sister’s unexpected death and after a quarantine that left me feeling disconnected from the world, I began to attack it with particular ferocity the minute the temperature went above freezing. I would go for a walk so I could compare my heap of frozen ice to others in the neighborhood. Then I’d head back home and, risking injury to shoulders, neck, and lower back, I would chip away at it until my body called it quits.
This morning I finished off the last chunk of ice and walked around the exposed sides of my home. Heavy snows always cause some destruction and this year is no exception. A branch of the Japanese maple I planted ten years ago has been nearly severed, although I might be able to salvage it. Other plants and bushes are mangled and broken as well. Some will come back, some won’t.
The winter did a number on me as well. I’m still assessing the psychic and physical damage and looking for ways to make some repairs. Three weeks out from my second vaccine, I am taking the first tentative steps out in public. We’ll see how that goes.
Meanwhile, Gray Mountain is no more, and spring is here.
For 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!
Valentine’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 
And 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.
Shades of gray on a winter’s day