“In February, the flora and fauna are dead, the traffic turns the snow the color of tobacco juice, the children are shuttered away in their schools, and the long days are silent. The cats grow wet and skinny, the rain grows hard and bitter, as if it is not rain but the liquid redistribution of collective conflict; it’s a frigid rain, a rain that pricks the skin of any upturned face, a damning rain that makes men eke corks from bottles. O February, you turn our hearts to stone.”
– Amity Gaige, Schroder
I not only read those words, I also feel them. It is the wordy-sentiment I feel towards the long winter in Chicago. When it begins its extremely slow descent in February, I have already hit my wall. My craving for warmth has reached starvation.
I welcome this entrance into sweet, sweet March with open arms and in full charge. March is a month full of promise for a new year of life for me and the closing of another. It is a promise that on the horizon there is warmth and cut-offs, blankets in parks, movies on large screens, busy backyards, and wine and laughter filling bellies.
It is a month that is cheering us on towards the closing of winter, and promises that the coming months will soon make up for all that the cold months may have taken away.
Though the tobacco juice-like snow may still linger on our front porches and streets, the sun waits with just as much eagerness to melt away our “stony hearts” … and sweet March is calling us forward.
