March back to New England

March is a sophomoric month, in like a lamb and out like a lost collegian. In New England, you don’t know from one day to the next what the weather will bring.

The weather in March makes you feel lost. You are at the mercy of mother nature's whims, a helpless victim. You do not belong to either winter nor Spring. One day you’re winter’s slave, the next day Spring teases your feelings, blows a 75 degree kiss across your cheek, and as you go to return it, you’re met with old man winter’s nose. When the weather man tells you snow is coming, you’re waiting and wanting to die. Then looking at the calendar you can feel reborn. It can get warm and and the air injects you with a new lease on life. You feel as if your whole life ahead of you will not have one down moment. Everything will finally be straightened out in your life and that of all around you.

I remember how every one of my 20 years in New England, without fail, I complained about winter, about Spring, about summer, about fall. Everyone did, that was cultural. But, we had normal complaints too like Republicans about Democrats and vice versa. Traffic. Neighbors. Work. School. Actually, the only years we didn’t complain much about sports was 1984-1986, when even Boston College made us proud.

Complaining about the weather is an undeniable right in New England, like life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They did not even have to write it in the Bill of Rights. When I began working after college, I recall how people would gather around the window, look out over the parking lot and complain about the weather. Each year it was the same. A coworker would say “When will it stop raining? I hate April!” Or in December, “Look it’s 4pm and it’s already dark!”

In high school, my mother used to get into the mix too. When she she would have to drive me to basketball practice, she’d always proclaim “I hate snow!” in such a way as to insinuate that I had been in cahoots with Mother Nature the night before to make it snow. Of course, July would bring those three weeks of Miami heat and humidity for all to complain about how miserably sweaty and sticky we were, craving for February for just a night. Then in February we’d always wish it were July. August would bring nights of 50 degree temperatures. My friends and I would stand around prematurely mourning the loss of summer, in heavy sighs, at the Friendly’s parking lot, weighed down by sweatshirts. We all knew full well that in little time September would mean one last breath for summer, even if for a few short weeks. But, by then we’d be back at school, so it wouldn’t really matter.

Every August it was the same, every May was the same, as was every July and every February. It was the same in 1997 as it was in 1987 and as it was in 1977, only cars, clothes and governors changed. But we had to treat each month, each season, each year as if it were the first one we had ever lived and the last one we might live, for that is how special it was to live in New England.