February

by Randy Cunningham

 I never thought much about February until a college friend of mine had a run of bad luck that month.  In one week his parents called to tell him that they were getting a divorce, his girl friend dumped him and he was put on academic probation. He went out, got drunk, fell asleep on his bed while smoking and set his apartment and a small patch of himself on fire.  From then on, you never saw John in February. He went into hiding.  He abandoned the bars.  He only left his place to go to work or school and then he was always looking over his shoulders.

      February is not on the surface such a bad month.  You start to receive your first breaks in the winter weather.  Life settles back to normal after all the hub bub of the holidays.  The days are getting noticeably longer.  It is a mercifully short month. 

      Still, February is a hard month to like.

      February is the month where all the winter recipes that you looked forward to in the fall, begin to bore you.  How many varieties of soup can one handle? February is the month where the nesting in and coziness of December and January become tedious.  However spacious your house or apartment is, it becomes smaller by the day.  A coat that weighed five pounds in December, weighs fifty pounds by February.  February is the month when you get sick and tired of those around you and wish you could assemble a new cast of characters for your life. February is a Bergman movie of few words and long pain filled stares. February is a pile of dirty snow, decorated with discarded pop bottles, fast food wrappers and a stolen grocery cart.   

      February was the month a friend stepped on a landmine during the Tet offensive in Vietnam.  February was the month when my father died.  February was the month when I was shot in a gun accident and spent a month in a hospital.  February was the month when I almost left my wife.  February was the month I got fired from a job I always thought I would have. 

      John was right.  One should go into hiding in February and from your hideout you should mark off each day with joy and the hope that this month will pass and you will be released from its dread.   

   This February has lived up to its bad reputation and then some.  The weather has been a harsh rebuke to those who have been spoiled by a succession of mild winters.  I haven’t been able to write.  I had a brief scare about a spot on my tongue. My dentist and oral surgeon were not concerned. I knew it was the Big C.  Then on top of all of the month’s usual trials there has been the inexorable approach of war. 

      Living in a society at war is like living in a house with a dead body.  The corpse is in the front room, slowly decaying and becoming more hideous with each day – but you cannot send for the morgue to take it away.  In fact you are under orders not to touch the body under pain of being labeled unpatriotic. 

      You ask how long until the body is reclaimed?  How long will the stench remain?  Those who saddled you with this burden assure you that if their plans go as expected relief should be coming very soon.  And if the plans don’t go as expected, you ask. Somewhere, a file is opened.  

      War is a calendar filled with nothing but Februaries.   War leaves you speechless.  War mocks your talent and pitches you back into illiteracy.  Great works of literature have come from past wars.  Few have been written in the approach to or during wars.  That is why war causes such anguish for writers.  It shows how useless we are in stopping the unstoppable, yet how talented we are in describing what should have never happened.  

      It is hard to write in such times, but write you must – even if you turn out crap or create the best lines you’ve ever written.  Writing is an act of hope.  It is an act of defiance. It is a way to take a breath, open a window, and fight for your voice.  It is a way to force the spring.   (Written in 2003)