To appreciate good, the argument goes, we need bad. To appreciate Sinatra, in other words, we have to have lounge singers. Without a Pinto, we can't prize a Porsche. We couldn't treasure Michelangelo if we didn't have papier-mâché. Without SpaghettiOs, veal scallopini would be nothing special.
I'm not buying it.
I could easily appreciate June without January.
Discard the 31 days between Dec. 31 and Feb. 1, and I could still revere October, still admire August, still marvel at May.
January is a dismal month. It is road salt and chapped lips, Vicks VapoRub and the drone of a dying battery.
There is a reason January has some of the shortest days of the year. There's nothing to see. In January the horizon has no seam. Earth and sky share a single color. Going outside is like falling into a vat of milk or being rolled in flour.
When we were young, my sister and I made big, fat snowmen. In some shoebox somewhere, there are photographs of the two of us standing proudly next to them in our back yard on South Center Avenue.
Those photographs weren't taken in January, however. Building a snowman in January is an exercise in futility. The snow that falls in January is impervious to sculpture. It has the density of dust. One has a better chance of shaping smoke.
January snow is fit for only this: shoveling. In January it snows every other day and always the same amount: 2 inches. Just when you finish shoveling the snow that fell the day before, more awaits you when you wake. The nagging scrape of steel on slab concrete starts to haunt your dreams. But let the snow pile up and pulling into the garage is like driving across railroad ties. You swear you're in a bag of popcorn.
I have lost all patience with January. Our differences are irreconcilable.
It wasn't always so. There was a time when I didn't mind the month, when I even liked it a little.
Our falling out occurred in North Dakota
I spent almost a decade in that state. Thursday, the temperature there was 44 below. That was the actual temperature – not some wind chill hocus-pocus for you mercury purists out there.
Here is what happens when the temperature is 44 below: You open your car, and the door handle snaps off in your hand.
When the temperature is 44 below, you spend one hour in the morning putting your clothes on and one hour at night taking them off. Breathing risks irreparable lung damage. You don't talk because your teeth are always chattering.
When the temperature is 44 below, North Dakotans get a glint in their eyes. It is the same world-be-damned look common to bomb squads and to circus performers just before they're shot out of a cannon.
Those nine winters in North Dakota
Some say January is a time for contemplation. The month, they suggest, is meant to sit and think. More than once I've taken their advice to heart, but each time the only thought I could muster was this: "January, phllbbt."
Of winter, English poet William Blake wrote: "Lo! now the direful monster, whose skin clings to his strong bones, strides o'er the groaning rocks: He withers all in silence, and in his hand unclothes the earth, and freezes up frail life."
I'm willing to bet Blake penned this poem in January.
The Saxons called January the Wulfmonath.
For obvious reasons, I'd say.