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February 28, 2005
This is February.
This is life: It’s the last day of February and there is fresh snow on the ground and we have mice living in our stove.
I can hardly blame them; it’s warm and comfortable in there, in the narrow space between the top of the oven and the metal plate beneath the range, and they can pop right up through the holes under the burners to get onto the counter and sniff around for crumbs. I can’t really blame them at all. But it’s unspeakably gross nevertheless to turn on your oven and have the smell of a hot mouse nest waft out of it.
This is February, the shortest month of the year, which somehow seems to have passed like those weekends when you notice all of a sudden it’s Sunday night and where has the time gone and did you really just sit on the couch watching HGTV for 10 hours? Only it’s a whole month, like, poof.
Sometimes life feels so fast and dull and like nothing more than a way of getting from one chore or errand to another that I have to step back and remind myself what it is to be alive.
Snow is good for that. When I started up the steps out of the Broad Street Line tonight, the sky was a luminous periwinkle blue and fat flakes were drifting past the yellow Midas sign and the snow crunched and creaked under my boots and all the cars were blanketed and the streets were glowing. The world felt quiet and I dawdled and walked down Federal so I could go past the old Jewish cemetery and look at the snow falling on the graves and outlining each branch of the magnolia trees.
February is when I start to notice that the days are getting longer. Through December and January, the darkness seems inevitable. At work, I watch the sunset splash salmon light on the face of the office tower to my east and turn back to my computer screen, knowing the sky will be dark by the time I leave for home. I don’t notice anything changing until one day, in the middle of February, when the air’s not so chilled and there’s light in the sky when I step out onto Market Street and I decide to walk home instead of taking the subway.
February ending feels like winter drawing to a close, and this snowstorm like a last hurrah. Crocuses aren’t so far off now, and then the magnolias will bud and those pink-blossomed trees, the ones with flowers shaped like little carnations or roses almost.
Life passes fast. Sometimes I have to step back and remind myself what I’ve done, explain how a month or a year can have elapsed.
In February, 2005, I read Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, The Orchid Thief and am rereading Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction and the Meaning of Liberty. I saw The Woodsman, Monster, Written on the Wind and Far From Heaven, and the entire first season of Sports Night. I knitted one and a half pillow covers. I painted a painting and signed up for an Abstract Painting class at Fleisher. I bought a car. I made some mix cds. I booked the ceremony musician for the wedding. I saw Aryani’s amazing new solo, “Introduction,” twice. I spent time with friends, and had good conversations over coffee, Indian food, the Superbowl, the Oscars, and lots of really good email.
In between, of course, I did all those things that sometimes feel like they’re all I do: washed dishes, went to work, shopped for groceries, researched car insurance, bought subway tokens, took clothes to the dry cleaner, did laundry, went to the doctor, picked up a prescription, booked an airplane ticket, shoveled snow, got a haircut, paid bills.
Bought mousetraps.
This is life. I have to remember that it’s supposed to be a mix of the mundane and the sublime; that’s how it works. Some days it’s a mix of the mundane and the annoying, the mundane and the mildly entertaining, the mundane and the misery. But some days you step out of the subway and they sky is brighter than it’s been this time of day in months and there’s snow falling and the streetlights are halos of gold and it may be weeks, but you know spring is on the way.
Posted by sarah at February 28, 2005 10:56 PM
