Backyard Notes - February

The distorted view

Backyard notes is a monthly feature of A Note From Melissa. It explores the changing landscape of the outside world and our inner lives as we move through the year. I hope it encourages you to look in your own backyard for changes and patterns.

Oh February.

This shortest month has felt like a lifetime. In the northeast, we’ve seen snowfall after snowfall. Even a blizzard found its way to us, burying snow with more snow. Layers of melt and slush and ice again and again toppled with a new coat. We saw massive icicles dangling from the roof, gleaming in their prisms, creating a distorted view through the window to the yard.

The winter, at this point, feels endless. We might be seeing more daylight and bird activity and I’ve even smelled skunks in the side yard some mornings, but spring still feels a long way off. We’ve found ourselves both restless and listless, with long days indoors, trying to engage in puzzles or board games, but resorting to screens and more screens. I can feel our brains rotting, our attention spans shortening, and our patience ever-thinning.

When the kids’ February break from school seeped into a series of snow days from the blizzard, I found myself with sensory overload. I didn’t know how many times I’d been asked for snacks and iPad time and Chromebook time and Nintendo time, what are we doing, where are we going, no, I don’t want to do that, oh, I don’t want to go there, on loop each day, interrupting every thought or semblance of a plan, my mind so tenuous, the slightest pinprick could shatter it into pieces.

That looping. That circus. It pulls us from our resting place. We can stay under the covers and watch the snow for only so long before we have to go out in it.

Between the release of the Epstein files and the noise and distraction of hundreds of asides, we are pulled. The whiplash of it all hammers at my heart each day. The joy of the Bad Bunny’s uplifting half-time show followed by snide, racist backlash. The glory of Alyssa Liu and her haloed hair, just after the shocking trips and falls of Ilia Malinin. The elated win of the U.S. Men’s Hockey team followed by the misogynist remarks of our President and the grotesque locker room display of Kash Patel.

All of this while wronged women wait for a reckoning that does not seem to come. Surely, we think, this will break the straw. But it does not.

February has twisted our view, covered it in snow and cold and clouds for so long that the view has become commonplace. Is it still possible to delight in snow when you’re buried in it? Is it possible to sort through what’s happening in the world when you’re pulled, again and again, to another fresh slew of news?

I try to stay focused on why I love my life and am grateful for it. Gatherings with friends. Toast with carrot rosewater jam and butter on a writing date at a friend’s dining room table. A group outing to Beacon, all the kids standing beneath mammoth art sculptures at the modern art museum, dangling feathers in front of kittens at the cat cafe, and fresh-made donuts with make-your-own toppings.

My kids and their cousin sitting on an outdoor swing in Maryland shouting chicka-dee-dee-dee! at the top of their lungs, while I worry their wild energy will disrupt the silent, neighboring retirement village. Even the deep-cleaning at the dentist, where they numbed my pre-diseased gums and made me think, yes!, this could be the start of a new Melissa, plaque and tartar free, armed with a new water pik and a fresh flossing routine.

I saw a rabbit unexpectedly leap in front of me while returning from a friend’s house one night, a sight that always reminds me of my mother and the stories of her backyard bunnies in the spring. The chickadee-dee-dees! are out singing with the nuthatches, while the male cardinals continue to bask in their redness against all the snow.

The eagles and great horned owls are nesting and, in the chaos of February, turned this way and that in the topsy, turvy of it all, I try to remember that things are slowly moving forward as they do each winter, whether my view is warped or not.

Though it feels as if all the scales in the world threaten to balance themselves against all the good, I think it is okay to stay a bit lopsided toward the best of things before righting yourself again.

As I write, melted snow falls from the rooftop. I don’t know if this is the last gasp of winter or a take-my-beer you ain’t seen nothing yet moment. But there is good here, that I know. I was listening to Anderson Cooper and Meg Falley on the All There Is podcast and they finished the show talking about the wonderfulness of the phrase I’m rooting for you.

I’ll steal it as my own. I’m rooting for you. For me. For all of us.