A Low Grade March

Dear Blog Reader:

I hope that these words find you doing well. Why would you think that I would not hope that you were doing well?  I would never hold it against anyone who so brazenly took off their flannel sheets in the first half of April. This especially the case on the Sunday after a week of very cool temps. Weather.com having alerted us to freeze alerts on Thursday and Friday. As the Lovely Miss Beverly said this morning, “Come on April show up!” “Yeah, April 2015 wouldn’t want to be known as the April that never was.” I responded. To which Bev quipped, “Only to be replaced by a low grade March.”  

A low grade March, we are stuck with you. Payment for overreaction to a day or two of 70 degree temperatures. I hope that it doesn’t get colder than the low thirties for an hour or two on any given night and that the apple blossoms stay in the bud for a few more days. The guilt of a ruined apple crop could prove to be crushing for many people’s spirits. This is especially true since you had been warned; warned to stay calm, don’t overreact, and leave the flannels on, more cold weather was on the way. We have not had black raspberry winter yet. If we keep a united front, show no weakness, it will go away. The cold knows that its time is almost up. Its reserves are weakened. It has to pick and choose its moments. It must search out the most vulnerable and least protected and then attack. And there you are sleeping without the flannel sheets.

I am doing fine. Thanks, for asking. Our flannel sheets are still snuggly in place. Things were a bit warm a night or two, but I was sleeping with a clear conscious. I was doing my part to keep the cold at bay. Letting Jack Frost know that there was no advantage to be gained by hanging around. “Why don’t you go on up to Michigan, or Wisconsin, or Minnesota? Just leave us be.”

All of this beseeching, begging that the flannels stay where they belong for how long they belong reminds me of a parenting story. There was a Facebook post a couple of years ago from a frustrated mother whose children refused to wear their coat from the school doors to the sidewalk where the car was parked. “Does anyone know how to get their kids to wear their coats as they walk to the car from school in the freezing cold?” To which I replied, “Park farther from the door. If they haven’t put on their coats by the time they almost reach the car just pull forward another 100 feet.”

Parents really waste a lot of time getting their children to dress warmly enough during the winter. Let the law of consequences rule. Oh sure, when they are newborns, you have to put your foot down and force their rebellious waving arms into coats, and feet back into socks and shoes. The poor little things don’t know what they are doing. However, about the time they have learned to sass or throw a tantrum, your responsibility for ensuring that they dress warmly. Yes, you have to provide the instruments of warmth, make them readily available, maybe even keep a bag close and handy in case their rebellious actions freeze and they start to warm to the idea that mom and dad are onto something with those warm cloths.

My dad spent years trying to get my sister to button up her coat. He used guilt, haranguing, logic, everything and reaped nothing but frustration for his efforts, well frustration and a daughter who would not zip up her coat. It is the same with you. I have given helpful advice. I have threatened you with dire consequences. I have used the guilt of appleless falls, all to no avail. The first stray 70 degree day in April comes along and you go packing the flannels off to the summer linen closet where they will do no good in helping you through the last fitful days of a stubborn northerly wind.

So we all suffer, we suffer because you have given Jack Frost hope. He is lurking out there, the sun getting higher in the sky. He knows that his days are numbered for this winter. But seeing weakness, he will strike, and I must confess that it does warm my heart just a little knowing that you are there shivering between you cotton sheets the last week of April, or is it the warmth provided by my flannels.

Take care and stay warm.

Roger