I have grown to dislike February, though a person with a sense of irony might try to suggest that February has actually been kind to me.

On 09 February 1982, a crazed self-identified Persian immigrant recklessly driving a VW sent my small body flying three stories skyward, triggering a nine-week hospital stay and a slight fracture in my law school career.

In late February 1991, I miscarried what turned out to be one of two twins (the other thankfully arriving at 34 weeks gestation in July of that year and now, at 31, on a trajectory to happiness in the windy city}.

Late in the morning of 14 February 1997, a pragmatic, blunt pulmonologist joined a haggard, care-worn neurologist in predicting that I had six months to live.

Shortly before Valentine’s Day in 2014, my third husband decamped for greener, more successful, and decidedly Republican pastures.

So here I am, a determined advocate of Looking on the Bright Side, straining to find the beauty in this February, here, now. 

A short squall cleansed the air today, leaving a crystalline sky overhead.  Though I did not get a photograph of the recent full moon, I watched her progress and got a stunning shot of her half-moon glory a couple of weeks ago.  I’ve tarried on the levee roads this weekend, watching hawks, swans, and my beloved egrets skim across the sky and the standing water in the flooded fields. 

Come to think of it:  I woke this morning.  I have food on my plate, heat flowing from the vent, and only a tolerable pain level, at least this evening.

As I ease into the waning hours of my three-day weekend, I glance around my tiny house.  I’ve spent most of the last few days cleaning cupboards and sorting the accumulated debris of a long rainy January.  Though a few chores remain unticked on my list, most have been done and dusted.  A full refrigerator offers healthy eating for three square meals through the workweek.  I actually have two invitations to social events at week’s end.  The month holds promise.  Twilight gathers around my tiny house, nestled here in a plush, fertile meadow in the California Delta. I’ll take a few Naprosyn, drink a glass of Icelandic water, and end the day lost in the pages of a Maigret installment that I might have read years ago but happily seem to have forgotten.  

It’s the fifth day of the one-hundred and tenth month of My Year Without Complaining.  Life continues.

February Twilight
by
Sara Teasdale

I stood beside a hill
Smooth with new-laid snow,
A single star looked out
From the cold evening glow.

There was no other creature
That saw what I could see—
I stood and watched the evening star
As long as it watched me.