March of time: Farewell to February

Many, many years ago, I wrote a column for Dutchess County’s Finest Daily Newspaper in which I bashed the month of February. Several decades later, the truth can be told: That week, I had absolutely nothing to write about. So, I wrote about how much I dislike the month of February. Oddly enough, it elicited more reader response than a “normal” column; go figure. Anyway, I do not remember the particulars of the article, but the thought has always stuck with me. For some reason, February has never been a month filled with a lot of positives through the years. Of course, this is sheer coincidence. It’s just a month, another page on the calendar. Right. Right?

The logical me knows that it is just a month, and that months – collections of four weeks or thereabouts -- in and of themselves cannot be “bad luck.” But the emotional me knows that February, in fact, sucks. This is the me that grew up with a superstitious grandmother in the house, one who refused to sit at the dining room table for big family meals because she would have made 13 people at the table; she would casually eat in the kitchen, while my father stewed over her ridiculous superstitions. I bought into her superstitions, every one of them: the rabbit’s feet, the St. Christopher’s medal in the glove box of the car, the cross made of palms from Palm Sunday that she always put in our vehicles, the “malocchio”/evil eye that she so fervently believed in (trust me when I say you did not want to get her cursed look). Unless you are Italian (and even if you are Italian), some of these rituals/superstitions may make no sense to you. I lived them, and that superstitious side of me remains to this day. Which is why today, I’m glad it is February 28.

And so today, I bid a fond farewell to that shortest and least favorite month. Say see-ya to February, and hope for better times and better events in the warming and increased sunshine days of March. Oh sure, they say “beware the Ides of March” (I never knew what that meant). But to me, it was always beware of February, the lost month of bad weather and bad things. In a few hours, it will be in our collective rearview mirrors. Good riddance. Until next year.