They say that February is the shortest month, but you know
they could be wrong.
Compared, calendar page against calendar page, it looks
to be the shortest, all right. Spread between January and March like lard on
bread, it fails to reach the crust on either slice. In its galoshes – and
you’ll never catch February in stocking feet – it’s a full head shorter than
December, although in leap years, when it has growth spurts, it comes up to
April’s nose.
However more abbreviated than its cousins it may look,
February feels longer than any of them. It is the meanest moon of
winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally
for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit
icicles into every gullible face, behaviour that grows quickly old.
February is pitiless, and it is boring. That parade of red
numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday
reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those? The only bubble in
the flat champagne of February is Valentine’s Day. It was no accident that our
ancestors pinned Valentine’s Day on February’s shirt: he or she lucky enough to
have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.
Except to the extent that it “tints the buds and swells
the leaves within,” February is as useless as the extra r in its name.
It behaves like an obstacle, a wedge of slush and mud and ennui, holding both
progress and contentment at bay.
James Joyce was born in February, as was Charles Dickens
and Victor Hugo, which goes to show that writers are poor at beginnings,
although worse at knowing when to stop.
If February is the colour of lard on rye, its aroma is
that of wet wool trousers. As for sound, it is an abstract melody played on a
squeaky violin, the petty whine of a shrew with cabin fever. O February, you
may be little but you’re small! Were you twice your tiresome length, few of us
would survive to greet the merry month of May.
Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume
http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm
