I can’t believe it’s still February. Time crawls by. I wonder if this is what Pope Gregory XIII thought when he plotted out these 28 endless days. He probably dipped his quill in the well and whispered, “Forgive me God, but I just can’t do this anymore,” and then consigned us, and all of history, to March. Thus was born the shortest month of the year.
And that is why February always lasts into March.
When I was in high school, a friend burned me a CD of Dar Williams songs that they had probably pirated from LimeWire. I listened to February over and over again. I was enthralled with it. Back then, I felt like everything was tragic, and this song just knew me in that deep and lonesome way that music sometimes does. In the song, Dar laments the loss of a lover at the end of a relationship. It’s so overwrought, and certainly overwrought for a sixteen year old. What did I know about lovers and keys? Nothing. It’s kind of embarrassing to listen to now.
But I don’t have to listen to it because I still know every word. At the end, Dar warbles, “I have lost to February” while a violin weeps. And when February comes around, I can’t help but wonder, Am I losing to February this year?
Yesterday Facebook served me memories from February, 2011. I had lived in New York for one year and I made a photo album captioned, “NYC: There isn’t anywhere else.”
I took the photos on my first iPhone, which I had just bought. The pictures are terrible—garish lighting, people caught mid-grimace, and weird backgrounds. In one, my friend looks like she’s wearing a football on her head. And the “artistic” shots. Well..
At the time, my boyfriend had just moved from Portland, OR to be with me after a year of long distance. I remember him standing on the doorstep of my tiny apartment in Park Slope with a huge, army-issue rucksack on his back. As soon as I saw him, I realized that he was the boy I knew, but I was a stranger. My first year in New York had changed me.
But I decided to go with it anyway. We found a railroad apartment in Astoria that stretched from the front of the building to the back. We delighted ourselves by standing at opposite ends of the new home and shouting various domestic sayings like “Have you seen the paper towels?”
During our first night, we awoke to some guy yelling in the street. He was calling for someone in the building. Finally, our upstairs neighbor opened his window and yelled down, “Yo, that’s not even his crib, yo! That’s not even his crib!”
And the dude goes, “”I don’t care! Come down here.”
We collapsed into each other as he staggered away, laughing, fumbling in the dark; yes, this is real, this is happening.
We decided to paint the main room. I picked out a sage green color, and wanted to see if we could find something glittery for the trim. When we got home, we started, but the paint appeared a lot darker than I had anticipated. I had to go to work and while I was there I decided that we shouldn’t paint the room sage green after all. I resolved to cover up what we had done with some white and cut our losses.
But when I returned that night, he had already done two walls. I have a picture of him, beaming, paint roller in hand.
I said what’s a flower / you said I still love you
I have now lost many lovers and many sets of keys over the years. I have lost my trapper keeper full of music to the cloud. And I’ve lost my teenage angst. Mostly. On my bad days sometimes I think life is a litany of losses.
Which it is.
And this February is freighted with loss. This country has lost 500,000 people to COVID. So many people have lost their livelihoods. And most of us have lost our way of life, those day-to-day routines and the friends and faces at the heart of them. We can’t even stop to grieve; we’re still tallying the losses.
We’re still chugging along, masks on. The city has changed and in its moment of vulnerability, its greatness is even more dear. Every day, when I go out for my walk, I’m stunned that nearly every one has their mask on.
It amazed me pre-pandemic. I used to stand above the subway platform at Times Square and watch the crowd below. At first, it looks like hell. It looks like chaos. But then, you look more closely and you realize that the people waiting for the train are standing such that anyone walking down the platform has a runway. The subway wouldn’t work if we all didn’t more or less agree to a basic unspoken social contract.
Last February, I’d transfer at 42nd street to catch the 2/3 going uptown. This time of year the subways can get particularly gross, what with all the slush and wet people drag in. And it’s always a crowded train. Everyone’s in winter coats. Everyone’s grouchy because it’s still fucking February. But we grit our teeth and get through it together. Just like we’re doing now.
So I guess this February, I am neither winning nor losing. I am just in it.
Laura Linart 