The Bitter End

I don't hate winter, but I do really dislike the period of time between Valentine's Day and Easter.

If you live in Minnesota, like I do, spring is still far away. This time of year is the stinging barb at the end of winter's tail, the time when all the fun wintry things are over, yet we still have to deal with cold, grimy crusts of road salt, chapped lips and dry skin, dead trees and the noticeable absence of birds and green growing things. Everything is a wasteland, both literally and figuratively.

It's the coffee grounds in the bottom of your cup, the bill you didn't expect, the long line for the cash register, the tear in your favorite shirt.

We haven't had any snow at all this year and on the whole, temperatures have still been unseasonably mild. We really dodged a bullet in terms of unpleasant winter weather. But still, this dead-air time, this time of year that seems stalled in the very bottom of the barrel of things that are bad about winter, is very hard to take.

But the good news is, spring does come, albeit slowly. As my friend Pista has noted, there are Shamrock Shakes at McDonald's now, and soon we'll be seeing Easter egg kits at Target. Eventually, there will be cheap tulips at the grocery store and the American Cancer Society will have its Daffodil Days fundraiser. There will be Girl Scout Cookies and shorts on the mannequins at Old Navy.

Each one of those things on their own doesn't mean much, but together they mean change is coming, slowly and steadily eroding the February page on the calendar. So god damn it, I'll take every last one.