Winter March

When I was a kid, I loved the winter. Couldn’t wait for it to snow so I could build an igloo in our tiny back yard in the housing project, or throw snowballs at the city buses, or rejoice at the rare snow day. I much preferred the cool and the cold to the warm and the hot. Fall and winter were “way better” than spring and summer.

Even as an adult, well into my thirties, I liked the winter more. There was something about the challenge of the cold and the snow that was invigorating, that somehow emphasized the sharp edges of being alive. The first winter we were in upstate NY was brutal – 24 inches of unexpected snow on Christmas day, the thermometer at our old farmhouse barely registering 0 for the first two weeks of the New Year. Slogging buckets of water out to the barn for our few but definitely hardy animals. It was wonderful. I don’t know that I ever felt more aware of and connected to my environment. Even driving was stimulating, though the 37-mile commute to work got old by March. I was generally much happier in the fall and winter than any other time of the year.

No longer. Over the last 20 years and especially the last few, winter has become a burden to endure rather than a joy to experience. The cold stiffens my arthritic joints and it is painful and sometimes debilitating. Snow is a mess to be moved – and moved – and moved again, not a scene of sheer beauty and exhilaration. The constant gray skies and short days depress the body, mind, and spirit. I dread the coming of winter, despair in the middle of it, and guard against intimations of its end just in case it doesn’t.

My relationship to the month of March has changed. As a child in Connecticut I simply didn’t like the month at all. Its arrival meant winter would soon end, although it always seemed to snow the first day of spring, even if only flurries. Now I experience ambivalence with a negative tilt. The days are definitely longer so that is good. The roads clear of snow much more rapidly so that is a relief. The time until golf begins can be measured in weeks (6 to 8) rather than months, so that is wonderful. Yet I fundamentally don’t trust the month. Some of the worst blizzards in memory occurred in March. The rapid warming is often followed by bitter cold spells, a chilling slap in the face of hope not dared earlier in the season. Experience teaches that although spring is around the corner, the corner is a long way off, no matter what the damned Pennsylvania woodchuck reported on Groundhog Day.