(HOST) Some people like February only because it’s short. Commentator Deborah Luskin teaches writing and literature in libraries, hospitals and prisons around the state so she’s on the road a lot. But in spite of almost certain stretches of bad weather – this is one of her favorite months.
(LUSKIN) February is all about weather, and if the weather is good, we have piles of snow, low temperatures, yellow sunlight and blue, blue sky. These can be the finest days of winter, fine days for winter sport. They are also days full of passive solar gain: sunlight, bouncing off the snow, fills my house. My cats stretch luxuriously in the warm patches of light and only interrupt their slumber to shift to a different couch as the sun moves across the sky.
But February weather isn’t always so nice. Sometimes we have long stretches of gray skies and cold rain. Ice covers the ground, making even the short walk to the hen house a dangerous excursion, and the return trip, with eggs in hand, perilous. February can be a month of broken eggs.
Even though I try to spend time outdoors every day, I give up during spells of February rain and resort to that most ironic activity of contemporary life, indoor exercise machines. When the dirt roads are glazed with ice and six inches of slushy water form a moat along every downtown curb, I can understand how the month gets its bad rep. As much as I like the defiant coziness of wading through ice water in good, rubber boots, I do eventually tire of having to don waterproof armor every time I step outside.
I also concede that February rain defines dreary, and the damp chill it brings requires diligent attention to the woodstove. No matter how hot the fire blazes, I find myself wearing a hat, socks and fingerless gloves even indoors. Keeping my ankles and wrists warm, I’ve discovered, is a trick that defeats the bone chill that accompanies February rain.
But – and this is what my friends call perverse – I actually like the bad weather that February can bring. I enjoy a spell of dirty weather to keep me at home, to settle in to domestic routines that make staying indoors not just tolerable, but delicious, like simmering an all-day soup and baking slow-rise bread. If the dreary, wet spell lasts long enough, I’ve been known to attempt one of those chores that’s been on my "To Do" list for years – like hoe out a closet, or address the pile of papers I keep meaning to file.
There are limits to virtue, however, and admittedly, even I can get tired of February, just like everybody else. It’s another thing that I like. As the poet William Blake writes, "We don’t know what is enough until we know what is more than enough." Short as it is, February can give us more than enough bad weather. So, when a cleansing arctic front comes sweeping down from Canada and pushes the gray rain out to sea, we can appreciate the lengthening daylight that fades to pink as it slides into dusk, lingering a little longer at the end of every February day.