February Freeze

It’s cold this winter, and the 18 inches of snow that fell two weeks ago is still piled up throughout the neighborhood, the city, the surrounding towns. It’s a pain to shovel, a pain to tromp around in, annoying to put four booties on Amelia’s paws to prevent them from getting cracked and bloody from our morning walks. It’s February. This is why people go to warm places late in winter.

And yet, February is somehow also the shortest month, and in a few weeks the winter will be over, and at least the snow and ice will probably be gone, even if spring won’t yet be warm by early March. Seasons dance into each other, and each storm threatens more snow, more natural occurrences to reckon with, more plans that may have to change.

We have so many unspoken expectations, readily disappointed, or at least disrupted, as if we thought we knew how things would unfold, because they did so yesterday and last week, so it seems the pattern is set and final. But it circles ‘round, up to its own funny business.