Despite T.S. Eliot’s bleak assessment of this new month, now that we’ve entered the territory of April, maybe the tide will change. I sure hope so. So far, this spring has been stuck in low gear: there have been a string of cold, gray, damp days, and if the sun did indeed dare to shine, it wasn’t warm enough to do any serious basking. But, as with all things, this, too, will change and before we know it, we’ll be sitting on the porch wishing we had one of those big rotating ceiling fans to cool the sweat on our brow. Nature doesn’t know stasis; she plays a coy hand.
Let’s face facts: spring is a fickle friend. Remember Robert Frost’s “Two Tramps in Mud Time?”
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.
I couldn’t say it any better myself, nor would I dare to try.
And yet, for all its fickle foolishness, I like April. My wife’s birthday is in April. So is her daughter’s. Baseball emerges from its winter den in April, while down in Georgia, the azaleas behind the twelfth green at Augusta National Golf Club are in full bloom, framing The Masters in its annual vernal glory.
And this year, there is a solar eclipse scheduled for April 8, during which a thin strip of land from red Texas to blue Maine will suddenly be plunged into almost total darkness for several minutes causing a few million people to get a crick in their neck. Don’t forget to wear your sunglasses!
A week after the eclipse, we’ll pay our taxes. That’s another dark day in our household, but I know that, just like the sun, we’ll reemerge from the moon’s shadow, thankful for the many benefits we derive from all those tax dollars flowing seamlessly into the efficient coffers of the Internal Revenue Service. Or so I tell myself.
And then there are all those April showers headed our way; you know the ones I mean, the ones that promise May flowers. Eternal optimist that I am, I look on all forms of April precipitation in the same way I look at my tax obligations: they are a necessary evil to endure if we are to eventually get to the other side of spring and on into summer. Or so I tell myself.
A friend of mine who is a faithful reader of these weekly Musings recently told me he has discerned a “streak of melancholy” in my writing of late. My first reaction was to deny, deny, deny, but maybe he’s right. There is a lot to unpack in the months of March and April, and it may well be that I have indeed succumbed to a touch of seasonal affect disorder. But all things being equal, maybe it’s finally time to put away my snow shovel and the fire pit, reattach the garden hose, do a little spring spruce up, and get back to sitting on the front porch where I can watch April deliver on its promise of better days to come. Or so I tell myself.
I’ll be right back.
Jamie Kirkpatrick is a writer and photographer who lives in Chestertown. His work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Washington College Alumni Magazine, and American Cowboy Magazine. His debut novel, “This Salted Soil,” and a delightful children’s book, “The Ballad of Poochie McVay,” are available on Amazon, as are two collections of essays (“Musing Right Along” and “I’ll Be Right Back”). Jamie’s website is Musingjamie.net.
Dana Michaels says
Steve, yes your “grumpy old man “ side has been showing lately. Not to worry, it’s no big deal. I’ve had that ailment for thirty years!