Those of us from
the northern, colder parts of the country who go off to
Florida for a few days or weeks of sun each winter are
somewhat disdainfully dubbed 'snow birds' by the indigenous
population. ('Indigenous,' in this case, means largely those
who, having visited Florida in winter, eventually moved there
and acquired, mentally at least, les droits de seigneur).
Two can play this game, of course, particularly when
Floridians flee northward in summer to escape the oppressive
heat and humidity of their adopted state. But what kind of
bird should we call them? After all, in the Northern
hemisphere, migrant birds come north for the summer and go
south in winter. We are after all complementary sorts of bird,
or two seasons of the same bird.. (The Canadian chanteuse
Anne Murray, has a lovely song called 'Snow Birds,' in which
the metaphorical becomes literal to serve a further metaphor.)
A long windup for
some thoughts on the role that the four seasons play for those
of us closer to the supposedly melting polar ice cap. In song
and story, in poetry, the four seasons function metaphorically
for the phases of human life. 'Winter Dreams,' a novella of F.
Scott Fitzgerald's,as well as his story 'The Ice Palace.' Or
'Waiting for Winter,' collection of short stories by John
O'Hara. Winter was the serious season in which O'Hara wrote
novels. The winter of our discontent, of course, and
often in popular songs in which life is likened to the passing
seasons, our lifetime a year of sorts. 'September Song,' but
also Chaucer's'Winter is acumen in.' Cardinal Newman's sermon
on the reestablishment of the hierarchy in England was called
'Second Spring.' I myself once wrote a novella called 'A
Season of Endings.
Even to pick such
random instances, tempts one to go on and on. Does one find
this sort of thing in Mediterranean authors, in Dante? An
Englishman in Italy could write, 'Oh to be in England, now
that April's there." I suppose it seemed to him that it was
always April in Italy. It would be a little smug, at least
regional, to assert that the moral life requires four seasons
in which to mature. To which a retort might be, 'Hail to thee,
blythe spirit, bird thou never wert.' Human beings are not
birds, of course, but we are inserted into the same natural
world as they, issuing from fertilized eggs, followed by a
protracted time in the nest, and then, at last, sent aloft in
the world on our own, but always flocking together. Birds are,
by nature, political animals, and so are we. But for their
'lonely betters,' as Auden called us, it is a task as well as
a condition.
We resist the
thought that there are seasons in our life, a time for this, a
time for that, as the Wisdom author did not quite put it. It
was Ponce de Leon who sought in Florida the fountain of youth
and his quest is mimicked to this day by temporary or
permanent snow birds. Propaganda for retirement features the
bronzed and youthful couple, having wisely earned and
invested, cavorting like the youths they no longer are under
the friendly sun. The discontented with their biological
winter offset by a good pension.
I have just
returned from Sarasota where at first my family, then just my
wife and I, and now just I alone have wintered for decades. Of
late, I have been staying again on Siesta Key, and I can find
there the places where long ago all of us spent such lovely
weeks. Mais oł sont les neiges d'antan? And where are
the tans of yesteryear? The tears of things are everywhere,
even on the white sand of the Florida beaches. I get a lot of
writing done in my now solitary migrations southward,
counteracting the indolence by hours at my computer before I
go and watch my fellow visitors gathering seashells that
tumble ceaselessly ashore. The intricate permanent casings of
their long gone contents. John D. McDonald, a prolific author
of mysteries, took up residence on Siesta Key before the great
post war developments began. He resented all these other
northerners who had found the place as delightful as he did.
Of course, he was pounding away on his typewriter much of the
time, earning the right to go out in his boat. He had a more
colorful term than 'snow bird' for those who came after him.
My mother once
told me that, when she was a girl, she visited an ancient
neighbor woman just after the harvest was in. In the course of
their conversation, the old woman said, "I don't think I'll
winter this year." She meant last through the winter, a
thought that carries an edge when uttered in Minnesota. But
she had wintered in another, better sense. She knew that she
was old and that her life was drawing to an end. That would
have been true whether she noticed or not. But it was her
serene acceptance, animated by faith, that struck my mother,
and consequently struck me. No literal bird could have that
thought, of course, and if it does not make us blythe, it is a
condition of moral maturity. We all end up, if we are lucky,
'sans hair, sans teeth, sans everything,' but few of us are
wise. The task is, in the phrasse, to act our age.
When Ezio Pinza
sang that 'our days dwindle down to a precious few, September,
November...' we catch the note of sadness, and of self-pity
too. Like Ponce de Leon, he could be the patron saint of those
who in the winter of their lives winter where winter does not
come. And that, alas, is all of us, to one degree or another.
I got a nice tan in Sarasota.
