Another cold, gray disconsolate dawn in late February 2021.
Followers of this blog may recall my sharing a bit of advice I give to writers: Never begin a story with a weather report unless the story is about the weather. Well, this blog is about the weather and how I’m quite sick of it.
It hit me quickly. I hail from Michigan and grew up loving winter. I still do. So does Gracie. The cold and the snow energize her. Me too. I look forward to chilly nights, a fire in the wood stove and sleeping under a heap of blankets. I love following Gracie as she breaks trail through the silent woods. Yet there comes a day when I’ve suddenly had enough of it all. Today it was another dreary weather report and the prediction of the dreaded “wintry mix.” I think the term wintry mix was the straw that broke the camel’s back. It’s so noncommittal. I’d rather have a blizzard.
So today I’m imagining leaves on the trees, cool spring nights on the back porch and breaking out my hammock. I even miss the hot breath of a New York subway train barreling into the Union Square station, its wheels squealing on the curved steel rails. This summer I hope to see throngs of people again eating lunch in Bryant Park behind the library with its great sentry lions, Patience and Fortitude. I hope most of them are back at work. I want to get Gracie back to the Chelsea Piers dog run so she can resume her social life in the city. I want this long pandemic winter to be over and for people to stop dying from this dreadful disease.
So, I am done with the cold and the snow and the dreaded wintry mix. I’ll miss it all come August perhaps. For now, I’ll dream of sun and warmth and longer days and better times for our country. They’re coming, I’m convinced. For now, I will hold close the lush verses from the Song of Solomon: “For behold, the winter is past; the rain (i.e., wintry mix) is over and gone. The flowers appear on the earth, the time of singing has come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land.”
Maybe this blog wasn’t entirely about the weather after all.
