The 7 colloquially-accepted stages of spring in Michigan:
1. Winter
2. Fake spring
3. Second winter ←you are here
4. Spring of deception
5. Third winter
6. The pollening
7. Actual spring
Denial
No, no, no. This can’t be happening. We grilled burgers last night. My kids haven’t worn their winter coats in three days. Yesterday I saw a robin. A ROBIN. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Harbinger of spring? Orange-breasted emissary of hope? Conveyer of a new day after winter’s long night? If Robbie says it’s spring, it simply cannot be snowing today. I will ignore the forecast. I will ignore the wintery view out my window. I will ignore the fact that I’ve been in a relationship with a noncommittal boyfriend named Michigan Spring for 38 years and am still begging to DTR (define the relationship).
Anger
A pox on your head, second winter, with your sleet and smug return to subarctic temps. I AM BELEAGUERED. I AM COLD. Even though I should expect these kinds of bipolar seasonal shifts, I somehow never do. This is a travesty. This is egregious. What kind of bass-ackwards, upside-down world has kids squirting each other with water guns one day and battling through snowstorms the next? What is real? What is true? Every time I get in my car, the opposite temperature of the air I want to feel is blasting out of the vents because apparently I existed in a completely different climate 12 hours ago. People can’t live this way.
Bargaining
Ok, you’re right. What did I expect? This happens every spring and I’m, like, totally chill about it. Five stars. No notes. I won’t rock the boat or think I deserve any kind of consistency. But let’s make a deal. I promise to stop complaining about the weather—at least some of the time—if you just give us another day in the 60s. I won’t say a thing when I send the kids to school in their parkas (because it’s 25 degrees) and they return to me in the afternoon as red-faced sweat-buckets with their pants rolled up to their knees (because it’s 55). We can ride the wave of 30-degree temperature fluctuations together! Just please don’t take away the sun.
Depression
Now is the winter of my discontent. I. give. up. The snow is blowing sideways and everything hurts and I’m dying. My skin will retain its ghostly pallor and my kids will wrestle on the couch like feral hyenas because it’s too cold to play outside. Now, my only job is to huddle under a heated blanket, eat ice cream, and drown in existential despondency while icy winds blow the sand toys away. I’ll never be warm again. I shall return to my SAD mole-person ways. As the prodigious words of Linkin Park say, “I tried so hard and got so far; in the end, it doesn’t even matter.”
Acceptance
The ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that “The only constant thing in life is change.” He’s no Linkin Park frontman, but I suppose there’s wisdom in both alternative rock and Greek philosophy. No season lasts forever—even though second, third, and possibly fourth winter seem to. In this liminal time of hunkering down and wearing three pairs of socks, there is permission to slow down. To ease up. To let the soft animal of my body love what it loves (furry blankets, hot drinks, simple carbohydrates). I didn’t plan to shave my legs or get any exercise this month anyway. Maybe second winter, with its uniform of fleece pants and shapeless sweatshirts, is more of a gift than I realized.
(But I will still open the sunroof every time temps go over 40, because no one knows how to live in hope quite like a Midwesterner.)
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Written alongside the lovely women in my writing group. For more words about spring and growth, check out A Blessing for the First Warm Days by Kim Knowle-Zeller, How do you pinpoint growth? by Erin Strybis, Losing my hair by Fay Gordon, and Hanami by Melissa Kutsche.
Modern Farm Wife 