April, the cruelest month

This March, when the spring winds started to blow, I remember asking someone, “Is April really the cruelest month?” Then April arrived. And the wind continued to blow . . . and blow . . . and blow, without relent. Remember that other, more quotidian saying: “April showers bring May flowers?” We had no rain in April—though we had a day of snow. I’d get up every morning in my passive solar house where the sun quits shining through the windows around about April and argue with myself: Do I really need to build a fire this morning, or can I just put on another hoodie and another pair of wool socks and read my book while shivering?

At least in March there was still snow in the mountains and I went skiing, a denial of spring. I wasn’t out in the garden trying to spread manure while the wind whipped it from the bed of my pickup onto my hair and face. I wasn’t up at 6 am opening my compuerta while the wind froze my hands to the shovel. I wasn’t pruning my trees praying that the wind wouldn’t drop the temperature just enough to freeze the fruit blooms.

On the positive side, though, I’m really thankful I don’t live in Placitas anymore. There the wind was an assault on one’s equilibrium and sanity. In our tin roofed house the rattling drove us downstairs from our bedroom to the living room floor for sleep. Just last week one of my friends who still lives there told me she was on the edge of a nervous breakdown in her home on an exposed mesa top: rattled, both figuratively and literally, anxious, locked inside despite the beginning of our Covid freedom.

Next year I’m leaving New Mexico during April. I haven’t yet figured out where I’m going or who’s going to want to take care of my house while the wind blows. I’m willing to wait until May to plant a garden, I’ll prune the trees in the winter, and if it doesn’t rain I won’t have any hay or flowers. I don’t care. At the end of a long winter I want to be somewhere warm, somewhere calm, somewhere soothing. I’ve had 50 years of spring in New Mexico and I deserve a break. We all do. The thing is, though, we all know it’s only going to get worse. But if I can skip the month of April, maybe I’ll still survive the other eleven.