THE SONIC BOOMER
February is my favorite month of the year. Not only is it my birthday month, but, come Valentine’s Day, we finally have the perfect excuse to renege on our hastily made and ill-thought-out resolution to avoid candy. Who would be so mean as to turn up their nose at a red heart-shaped box of candy? You just can’t!
Of course, December is my real “favorite month.” Not only does it offer the mad frenzy of the holidays (including psychological license to shop up a storm), it offers the promise of a great new year.
Which is why I love January. It takes time, but in January, I gather up all the receipts and photos and outdated mail of the previous year and sort it into its proper bins, then start out fresh with a big smile on my face. What could go wrong?
And then there’s March. Everyone gets to be Irish for a day and spring is just around the corner. This year, Easter is in March. That means little girls in pastel dresses and little boys in uncomfortable suits, posing for pictures before they get back to the real world of jeans and T-shirts. It’s just too cute.
April brings showers — of tax refunds. Preparing one’s taxes is an enormous job, but I’m always curious to see how things turn out in the end. If it ends up with the government sending me a check, I’m ecstatic. They ought to send me a check every month. (Oh, yeah! Someday I’ll have Social Security for that.)
May is another favorite month of mine. It doesn’t have any child-centric holidays in it, but it does have Mother’s Day. Mother’s Day is a lot less frenetic and a lot more stately. The restaurants are glutted with mothers, all of them saying the same thing, which is, “You don’t have to do this.” But the mothers have also said, “Don’t get me anything! I don’t need anything! Where would I put anything?” So dinner it is.
Of course, one cannot argue against the summer months as favorites. June, July and August have kids home from school and the fireworks on the Fourth of July. Summer vacations take place, and families get to reconnect while riding in the car, touring caves or standing in line at Walt Disney World.
Still, I have always loved September. With the kids back in school, I could start hunkering down for fall. I always want to redecorate in the fall and, in Florida, I always prefer “fall cleaning” to “spring cleaning.” The weather is cooperative, and it makes sense to get everything ship-shape before the relatives show up in November and December.
Finally, it’s October. What a cool, fun month that is! Halloween is constantly evolving; it seems to be more fun every year. Any celebration that allows for that much creativity can’t be all bad. And a tip of the hat to Martha Stewart Living, a magazine which takes a lot of flak for being the OCD encyclopedia of magazines, but which embraces Halloween in amazingly new and creative ways each year. It’s my favorite issue.
Did I mention that November is my favorite month? I love how American families go through heck and high water to travel over the river and through the woods to get together for Thanksgiving. The airports are a mess… the highways are glutted… the trains and buses are overcrowded… and all because we want to be together again, even if it’s for just one single day. I love that.
So now you know what my favorite month is. I’m sure you have your own.
