February is always hard for me.  I don’t like the gloom, or the cold, or the grayness.  But usually, I’m able to surrender to it and tough it out. 

Maybe this particular February is even harder precisely because it doesn’t feel like February.  Instead of waiting it out with my usual blend of stoicism and patience, I’m just sort of pissed off.  February is not behaving the way it should.  Nothing is.

If there is a common thread to the thousand cuts that have frustrated me during the last few weeks, it’s generalized anger that things aren’t the way they’re supposed to be.  I keep shaking my fists at the heavens, wondering why students don’t follow directions, why people don’t meet deadlines, why family doesn’t do the right thing, why kids get sick, why I’m not off work on Monday, why I have to drive a van load of teenagers to Toledo tomorrow instead of driving in my own car while listening to my book on tape and enjoying the solitude.  That’s what I signed on for, but it’s not what I’m going to get. 

The answer, of course, is simple. People (myself included) don’t do what they should when they should because life is just so stinking complicated.  Students don’t always follow directions because they are working 40 hours and taking 15 credits and parenting a couple of kids.  People don’t always meet deadlines because they, like me, are overwhelmed by the demands of work, family, and life, and because sometimes, something’s got to give.  Families don’t always do the right thing because families are infinitely complicated organisms, and triangulating the competing demands of all of their members is impossible.  Kids get sick because kids get sick.  Plans change because plans change.  The universe tends toward chaos.  Getting angry because my sense of order is violated is a losing proposition.

Tomorrow, instead of spending the morning managing my online classes for a couple of hours and then, after a leisurely lunch, making my way north to judge a speech tournament, I will show up at 9am to the rental joint, pick up 12 kids from their high school, and endure 3 or so hours of chatter and chaos.  I will spend the weekend trying to wedge some grading in between judging rounds of speech competition.  I will eat a lot of junk food, get too little sleep, and return home much too late on Saturday night, hopefully safe and sound. 

And sometime along the way, I will count myself lucky to be surrounded with these bright and funny kids.  I will remember that I love my job, even as I cram it in between other obligations.  And I will enjoy the family that gathers on Sunday, because they are the people who are forced to love me (and whom I’m forced to love).

You’d think in my 46^th February, I’d have figured out how to surrender to the month’s peculiar demands, but I’m still working on it.  Its gifts are hard to find, but they’re there, like bulbs buried beneath the dirt.  A few more weeks, and they’ll be flowers.

*This post was my contribution to the crowdsourced blog at my college, the 3six5 Sinclair, which, in a moment of madness, I founded.