A scruffy groundhog got out of bed on February 2nd. He waddled to the bathroom and peered deeply in the mirror looking deeply at the lines and shadows in his face. He was defining them for their defining statement about the remaining days of winter.
Winter is always difficult for the groundhog. That is why he checks for all of us to see how many days of frost and chill remain. This one was worst than the ones before. The shoots of spring and the salad days of summer had been meager and disrupted. Provisions and insulation were not what they usually were.
The previous years had the certainties of ever and always has been. This past year was filled with surprising not anymore and things anew. His life went from everybody is always around to somebody is sometimes around. But winter did not change. It brought the cold, the short days, the darkness, the blues. The groundhog spend most of his time in his new burrow, hungry—for heat, for food, for connection. And he tried to count his blessings and plan out a better winter for the next year. He is a “makethebestofit” type of groundhog.
The winter took its toll regardless. The groundhog was worried about what his saw in his face. It contained new troubling things (touches of forlorn, haggard, and decline) and was missing things (hope, radiance, confidence) that had always been there before.
From his burrow, the groundhog decided company was the cure for all of his woes. But his quest through Match, OKC, and Tinder not only did not bring much company, it brought hundreds of cuts to his self-esteem. It brought him a mindset of self doubt. New things that he had previously been untouched by including body image problems started to enter his definition of self. Every way he sought to promote himself as swipe-worthy, seemed to let him now that he was not 25, was not 6 foot 2, was not rich. When before he would have been so proud of himself for putting himself out there, for overcoming shyness and reaching out and making contact, for doing something to make it possible to make a connection. These things were not happening. He heard self-doubt and isolation brewing inside himself.
Among groundhogs he had previously disliked winter more than average, but survived the winter blues better than average. He had companionship yes, but he also had a vision of the spring to come in a way that warmed him instead of making him count to slow days, hours, and minutes until spring weather and renewal began. He would quietly celebrate the winter solstice in December and collect the minutes of the lengthening days in his heart like gold in Fort Knox.
It is simply harder this year. The groundhog must do the things it takes to take the bad omens and the dark shadows out of the face in the mirror. One thing was clear. Winter was going to extend six extra weeks this year. It was going to take extra work to generate the joy of spring. He was going to have to build his circle of community from somebody sometimes, though somebody most of the time, to everybody most of the time.
The groundhog went back to his computer and cancelled his account on Match. It was not working. It was not healthy for the groundhog. Dates would come up occasionally, there was one on his calendar for next weekend, but the active seeking of dates was not a good plan for this groundhog. He would need to survive the work grind of winter, shake of the exhaustion that tended to become a self-fulfilling cycle of isolation, and make calendar filling plans.
A hike here, a tennis match there, a basketball game, a happy hour, a day with one of his children, a visit with his father, a phone call with his brother. Mix, rinse, repeat. These things would generate the social cycle of spring and become increasingly easier with the sights and sounds of spring. By the time the cycle of southern flowers goes through it weeks of color—white, then yellow, then purple, then pink—his outlook should be flowering from fake smiles, to geniune human companionship, to real smiles.
At one point the groundhog’s face will recapture its aspects of hope, and mischievousness, and mirth. Quietly, without hunting for it, without waiting for it it will happen. Days will return, then weeks, then months and more where the groundhog will be looking forward enthusiastically.
Spring will return and it will promise the hot play ground of summertime and the warm long easy months of fall.