April is Not the Cruelest Month
T.S. Eliot was wrong about this one. April is not the cruelest month. I think the prize goes to February.
This has been the hardest Winter in about 19 years on the prairie, according to Rusty Lord, our trusty meteorologist. No shit. If it isn't snowing, it is so cold that your teeth ache when you go outside. The wind howls like a woman scorned. Our backyard is a white bowl. The naked lady bird bath is buried up to her neck. I look out the picture window at her and she truly looks mad as hell. Whenever I pull out of the driveway, I look at the swirls of snow on top of our house, like some deranged Dairy Queen cone. I think about when that melts in the Spring. Should we worry?
The sun is fleeting. It peeks out now and then and when you walk outside, you hold your hand up against it as you do on very hot Summer days. Except the heat is unfelt. What you are blocking out is the glare of that sun on the snow. It produces a blinding effect that makes the eyes water. The wind is relentless, it blows the snow back and forth across the driveway like a child with a rag doll.
The snow, when combined with the wind produces blizzards that are truly terrifying to be out in. The snow is flung into your eyes like stinging darts and the skin on everyone's faces is continually chapped. No amount of my L'Oreal Age Perfect Rosy Tone Creme works. I have switched to good old Aquaphor, an ointment that is similar to Vaseline in consistency. I slather it on my face, body, and especially my poor feet in chunky slabs. My skin drinks it up like a desert. Before I shower, I massage Vitamin E oil on to my scalp. My tufts of hair drink it thirstily; my bald spots are thankful.
But, that is just the physical part of a hard Winter. The mental part is worse. I remember when I was a child, reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's, "The Long Winter." There was a part where Laura's gentle father, her Pa, became so frustrated with the howling winds of February that he held his fist out to the ceiling and screamed that he would NOT be licked by Winter. Of course, they had even more reason to be mad than I do. The Ingalls family was twisting hay into logs to be burned because they ran out of wood. Dinner every night was bread with a swipe of butter. A cup of tea. My frustrations are nothing like that.
I am just sick to death of Winter. Sick of driving with my knuckles white on the steering wheel. Sick of turning up the electric blanket to High and going to bed early just because I can't get my feet to warm up any other way.
I'm sick of talking about the weather to other cheery prairie people. Because that is what we do. The weather on the prairie is always worth conversation because it is so harsh and so changeable. Every year, T and I look at each other and wonder why we live here. This Winter, it has been worse. T, who is the one who has to work the snow blower, is even crabbier than I am about it.
"Think about it," she says. "If we lived in the South, or in California, we wouldn't spend the Winter with chapped lips."
It is the end of February, the worst of it. In a few weeks, we will see our first robin vying for a place at our bird bath. The sun will come out and everything will be a muddy mess for a few weeks, but at least we won't be shivering constantly. And then one day, I will notice that there is not ice everywhere or puddles. One day, the breeze will suddenly have a softer feel to it. That will be Spring tiptoeing in to check things out. She won't stay for long, maybe just for a day or just for a few hours. She will leave again and Winter will return. But, little by little, Spring will come to visit more and more often. And then she will stay.
And frankly, this writing may prove to be historical since global warming is coming far faster than anyone thought possible. One day, after I am long dead....but when Lucy's grand children are alive, they will ask their grandmother what snow was like. What was sweater weather? Did the leaves on the trees REALLY turn
colors? What did flowers looks like? Real ones could actually grow in your back yard?
It will be like us explaining telephones on the wall and party lines to our kids. Or, riding bikes until the street lights came on. It will be something in the past. Something, not replaced by technology, like wall telephones. It will be something precious lost due to stupidity.
I guess that means that I should stop complaining about it now. But, sorry....I have cabin fever. Another two words that soon will go out of use.
February, right now, is the cruelest month.
This has been the hardest Winter in about 19 years on the prairie, according to Rusty Lord, our trusty meteorologist. No shit. If it isn't snowing, it is so cold that your teeth ache when you go outside. The wind howls like a woman scorned. Our backyard is a white bowl. The naked lady bird bath is buried up to her neck. I look out the picture window at her and she truly looks mad as hell. Whenever I pull out of the driveway, I look at the swirls of snow on top of our house, like some deranged Dairy Queen cone. I think about when that melts in the Spring. Should we worry?
The sun is fleeting. It peeks out now and then and when you walk outside, you hold your hand up against it as you do on very hot Summer days. Except the heat is unfelt. What you are blocking out is the glare of that sun on the snow. It produces a blinding effect that makes the eyes water. The wind is relentless, it blows the snow back and forth across the driveway like a child with a rag doll.
The snow, when combined with the wind produces blizzards that are truly terrifying to be out in. The snow is flung into your eyes like stinging darts and the skin on everyone's faces is continually chapped. No amount of my L'Oreal Age Perfect Rosy Tone Creme works. I have switched to good old Aquaphor, an ointment that is similar to Vaseline in consistency. I slather it on my face, body, and especially my poor feet in chunky slabs. My skin drinks it up like a desert. Before I shower, I massage Vitamin E oil on to my scalp. My tufts of hair drink it thirstily; my bald spots are thankful.
But, that is just the physical part of a hard Winter. The mental part is worse. I remember when I was a child, reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's, "The Long Winter." There was a part where Laura's gentle father, her Pa, became so frustrated with the howling winds of February that he held his fist out to the ceiling and screamed that he would NOT be licked by Winter. Of course, they had even more reason to be mad than I do. The Ingalls family was twisting hay into logs to be burned because they ran out of wood. Dinner every night was bread with a swipe of butter. A cup of tea. My frustrations are nothing like that.
I am just sick to death of Winter. Sick of driving with my knuckles white on the steering wheel. Sick of turning up the electric blanket to High and going to bed early just because I can't get my feet to warm up any other way.
I'm sick of talking about the weather to other cheery prairie people. Because that is what we do. The weather on the prairie is always worth conversation because it is so harsh and so changeable. Every year, T and I look at each other and wonder why we live here. This Winter, it has been worse. T, who is the one who has to work the snow blower, is even crabbier than I am about it.
"Think about it," she says. "If we lived in the South, or in California, we wouldn't spend the Winter with chapped lips."
It is the end of February, the worst of it. In a few weeks, we will see our first robin vying for a place at our bird bath. The sun will come out and everything will be a muddy mess for a few weeks, but at least we won't be shivering constantly. And then one day, I will notice that there is not ice everywhere or puddles. One day, the breeze will suddenly have a softer feel to it. That will be Spring tiptoeing in to check things out. She won't stay for long, maybe just for a day or just for a few hours. She will leave again and Winter will return. But, little by little, Spring will come to visit more and more often. And then she will stay.
And frankly, this writing may prove to be historical since global warming is coming far faster than anyone thought possible. One day, after I am long dead....but when Lucy's grand children are alive, they will ask their grandmother what snow was like. What was sweater weather? Did the leaves on the trees REALLY turn
colors? What did flowers looks like? Real ones could actually grow in your back yard?
It will be like us explaining telephones on the wall and party lines to our kids. Or, riding bikes until the street lights came on. It will be something in the past. Something, not replaced by technology, like wall telephones. It will be something precious lost due to stupidity.
I guess that means that I should stop complaining about it now. But, sorry....I have cabin fever. Another two words that soon will go out of use.
February, right now, is the cruelest month.
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