The Winter of Our Discontent

Another season, another rank disappointment.

February creeped into town last week on little Spring paws and settled on its haunches, looking and feeling pretty much the way January did: temperate, mildly chilly, unimpressive, lacking in seasonal character, and snowless, utterly snowless.

Is it fair that an autumn as limp and formless as just passed should be followed by a winter as worthless on all terms by which we traditionally rank winter? The last, and only, snowy day of the season was, by my memory, back on Dec. 2 or thereabouts. Since then, a long string a drab days of no distinction. Every ten days or so, wishful-thinking meteorologists predict a show shower, always erroneously. Meanwhile, the simple-minded anchormen and women commend them on the great beach weather they've delivered.

It's enough to make you move to Vermont or Upper Michigan, just drive north until you see a drift. My shovel has seen no action this winter. My son has given up on his dreams of a snowball fight. My trips to the skating rink feel somehow dishonest. Weather should have poetry. Seasons should create natural demarcations in our lives. We currently exist in a "No Exit" kind of climate, in which one day, one week, one month is much like another, causing a sensory numbness sets in. If the darkness and coldness of winter engenders depression in many souls, as the sociologists insist, then I believe the absense of winter-like conditions during winter create a different sort of unsettling.

Some weather reports call for snow tomorrow. If I'm wrong, hurrah! Otherwise, I say: Ha!

UPDATE: Perhaps the Gods heard my plaintive cry last night. This Monday morning, fluffy flakes the size of quarters are coming down steady.

FURTHER UPDATE: Ah, well. It didn't stick. Doesn't stick, doesn't count.