As far as your conscientious observer is concerned, it is. We are headed into the worst month of the year. Cold. Nasty. Snowy and icy. Bundle up before you go out. Rearrange your coat so you’re comfortable after you get in the car. Wrestle with the seat belt when layers of clothing make it hard to reach around in back of you to get the thing. Then getting it past all that fabric into the slot. Nothing is easy in January.
Scraping the windshield. Waiting for the car to generate enough heat for the defroster to work.
January is one damned hassle after another!
At least the shortest daylight day of the year is ten days past and there’s some benefit to knowing in the back of our mind that the days are starting to get a little “longer.”
BUT IT’S STILL JANUARY!!!
January is only moderately more acceptable now that I am not getting up at 4:30 and suffering my way to the newsroom a little after 5. Go to work in the dark. Come home in the dark.
A bowl of hot clam chowder helps elevate the spirit a small notch. Hot cocoa helps, too. A blanket on the lap with a cat sleeping on top of the blanket brings some peace.
Some of you think you can play in winter. You’re crazy. Keep your stories to yourself about going to Vail for a week of skiing. The last thing I can think of as fun is trying to avoid the trees while hurtling down a frozen slope on snow three feet deep with the temperature hovering around fifteen.
Forget December 21 as the scientific start of winter. It’s four days before Christmas and the good feelings that go with it. But when the afterglow of Christmas fades there’s only January. . It’s just a frigid, grim march to February—a short month during which men begin to play baseball and race cars start to run hot again, and there’s the sweetness of Valentine’s Day and the snow doesn’t seem to last forever and sometimes the thermometer hits 40 or 50, temperatures that bring hope that we might have made it through the worst after all.
A few years ago I found a little book called If This isn’t Nice, What is? It’s a series of graduation speeches given by the famous author, Kurt Vonnegut. The first entry is his graduation address at Fredonia College, New York on May 20, 1978. In that speech, Vonnegut correctly observed that we are wrong when we think there are four seasons and when we let the sun’s position determine what they are. There are six, he said.
“The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are so depressed so much of the time. I mean, Spring doesn’t feel like Spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for Fall and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons. Spring is May and June! What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves. Next comes the season called “Locking.” That is when Nature shuts everything down. November and December aren’t Winter. They’re Locking. Next comes winter. January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not Spring. Unlocking comes next. What else could April be?”
I am Vonnegutian in my understanding of the seasons. I am locked in to January and February, waiting only for the arrival of Unlocking, warmed only by my inner curmudgeon, and comforted only by the fact that I remembered to write “2021” when posting this entry.
Oh, by the way—Happy New Year.