In The Bahamas they call bad weather “drinking days”. Bad weather is rare in The Bahamas, so I am not sure how they explain the rampant alcoholism on their balmy shores, but that’s another blog post. I have always thought of squally days as the perfect time to curl up with a good book, a fire in the fireplace and a bottle. Sorry to the purists out there who tell me I am supposed to have reached a “paradigm shift” by now, but I still have waves of nostalgia for the state of being comfortably numb…
I have tried to refrain from talking too much about the weather since I moved to Michigan from Florida. Apparently I have been less restrained in my critique than I thought. David, Rae, Lisa and I were on our way to lunch on Thursday, and when I asked if it was rare to have a blizzard in April (apropos of the previous weekend’s avalanche), David replied with uncharacteristic pissiness, “Oh for God’s sake. You act like you’ve never heard of winter before. You are from Michigan. You went to college in the Upper Peninsula…”
I was chastened. It was a beautiful, spring day after all and we were on our way to Maggie’s – a little slice of Tijuana, nestled in downtown Grand Rapids – and I probably have been acting like some dislocated, isolated tribeswoman. Is that a snowflake? What are mittens? I’m so cold…
Okay, okay – I’m from FLINT, David – but it doesn’t mean I like to drink the water…
Anyway, spring has sprouted, everything is budding and I am feeling like a million bucks. I wrote a rather giddy, ode to sobriety yesterday, thinking we could all put our “drinking days” behind us. Then I got a comment from Mike.
He said (kind of like Hamlet), “To Drink? I can think of all the reasons, its the ‘to not drink’ reasons I have trouble with. I am single, good job, friends, savings, retirement and bought a house…. I am good on paper, but have battled with substance abuse in my past. Doing okay now, though the nice weather makes not drinking to excess every night difficult.”
And then it hit me. All those people coming outside for the vitamin D – strolling in parks and sitting on spring lawns in folding chairs: barbeques and boat rides. For some, beautiful weather is the “drinking days” and spring is a trigger.
We went for a walk with a few of the residents yesterday afternoon at Reeds Lake. There was a couple standing on one of the bridges in the sun, looking at the swans and in the man’s back pocket you could see the outline of a flask…
