You’ve been missed, month of promise

I moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 1979 to begin my journalism career. During the first days of February there, I savored the warm evenings. But by the end of February, when a cold snap snapped through, I wore my turtleneck with longing. Within two years, I moved back to colder climates. I missed “real” Februarys.

But good riddance to January, the bleakest month. Columnist Jamie Tobias Neely wrote an article Saturday about how calls to divorce lawyers escalate in January. And recently I searched out death rates for January, because our classified obituary section seems to overflow with death notices then.

In Washington state, January and March consistently vie for the dubious distinction of most deaths, compared with the number of deaths in other months, according to state health department statistics. In Idaho, January and March also consistently trade off as highest-death months.

In both Idaho and Washington, however, deaths ease up in February, some years by a considerable margin. I’m not surprised. There are fewer days in February, compared with January and March. But the timing of people’s deaths always includes a bit of mystery. Some grief experts believe, for instance, that January’s high death rate can be attributed to sick people holding on until after the holidays are over.

I like to think that February’s lower death figures stem, in part, from the nature of February. It offers a glimpse of spring hope. This glimpse begins with the weather. It can snow in February. It can rain. It can be bitterly cold. But the sun can shine gloriously, too.

My brother Joe and sister-in-law Mary were married in early February 1963. The first day of the month it was 23 degrees; 8 inches of snow rested on the ground. The week of their wedding festivities, temperatures climbed into the 50s, melting the snow. It reached 55 on Feb. 10, a “departure from climatological normals” in weather parlance.

The week proved such a novelty that I can still remember many details from it, even though I was 8 years old. I remember the light-green sweatshirt that substituted for my usual nylon ski jacket. I remember we played outdoors for hours. I remember the brown grass in the front yard seemed embarrassed to be exposed so early in the season.

Joan Didion’s excellent memoir “The Year of Magical Thinking” is mostly a January read. Her husband died suddenly of a heart attack while sitting at the dinner table. He had just returned home from the hospital where their daughter struggled through a coma. Their daughter later died, too.

Didion writes: “Life changes fast. Life changes in the instant. You sit down to dinner and life as you know it ends.”

February weather also provides a lesson in how quickly reality can alter, from snow to sun to snow again. Life changes in the instant.

I also like February because of its brevity. It never overstays, even when it adds an extra day during leap years. January hogs its 31 days, greedily gathering more for the death records.

Like January, many things go on too long. Concerts and movies and newspaper columns. February teaches that brief is often better.

In Fort Lauderdale, my face broke out in a dramatic way. Doctors called it tropical acne, and they tried many medicines, but it cleared up only after I moved back to four seasons.

There is a kind of out-there diet theory that says we should eat foods suited to our body’s blood types. I believe we need to live in climates best suited to our souls. Two of my nieces have worshipped the sun since childhood. One now lives in Florida, the other in California. Their skin glows.

As for me, I’m a February gal. Welcome.