Friday, May 09, 2003
A Midwestern Spring
I believe in something called the Midwestern character. As a native Midwesterner who has also lived many years in the South and the West, I can appreciate the way weather shapes character. Outsiders seem surprised that so much of our local news broadcast is devoted to weather reports. Most of us no longer live on farms, but the weather is still central to who and what we are. The weather report tells our story. In winter, we need to know the precise measure of our suffering, because it is also the measure of our virtue. In the midst of a long cold winter, I certainly feel like a Midwesterner, toughening to the cold, learning to give up all hope of sunshine, to count on nothing. But I also know that winter isn’t the real test. Winter is the easy part.
An outsider might think the winters are the worst, but winter is consistent. We adapt ourselves to the constant cold. We lower our expectations and set our hearts on mere survival. Winter is merely oppressive; we bend our backs to it and soldier on. Spring, on the other hand, is cruel. Springtime promises so much and can destroy all that it promises.
Waiting for the spring to arrive is an exercise in self-restraint, but soon one masters the technique. The trick of waiting is easiest for Midwesterners, who know that waiting isn’t ultimately a matter of waiting for anything. Anyone who is so foolish as to wait for the spring discovers that the real misery only begins with the first hint of mild weather. I can always recognize a life-term Midwesterner by his or her reaction to the first blush of spring, when the air is suddenly fresh, the robins have returned, and the crocuses break open. I’ve been spoiled by milder climates, and I am always excited when the weather changes, ready to put away my winter clothes. But a thorough-going, faithful Midwesterner has a stern, fatherly voice within him that snaps, “Not so fast, son!” Because in the Midwest, spring is a liar, a trickster, a cheater; a court jester who arrives at our door offering bright flowers that wilt and fade in our hands. He tempts us to relax and to hope for happiness, only to shove us back into winter, abandoning us just when we thought we had found love and freedom at long last. Spring, that archetypal season of renewal, here makes promises it can’t keep. And so to the Midwesterner, springtime is only an idea, never a reality. Spring is a vision of what might have been if the world were governed by wishes, but it isn’t. By his ninth year of life, the Midwesterner, like a thrice-abandoned bride, will never trust another spring. He knows that it is a season of fits and starts, that the snow can return and last, and then suddenly it is hot swampy summer and there really was no springtime.
Consequently, Midwesterners don’t give their hearts easily. We aren’t easily persuaded. We’re only too aware that the first step can collapse, that the cards are probably stacked against us, that the offer is too good to be true, the good times won’t last, the gas gauge is broken, the chickens won’t hatch, the prize was a mistake, she won’t call back, the grass is always greener, and that the wrong turn happened so far back that any turn now is likely to be a wrong turn. We know that fools are born every day. This is no petty-minded suspiciousness. It is hard-won realism. It is a kind of plain-dealing.
Ironically, no one is more trustworthy than a Midwesterner. No American is more humble. We are deeply conservative in the old-fashioned sense. Even in politics, Midwestern conservatives aren’t the Gingrich-style neo-cons preaching about revolution and dismantling the government; we are the Richard Lugars, cautious, slow to anger. We’re in no hurry to change things. We are not so eager to gamble everything on a hunch or to assume that a windfall is anything more than a windfall. We save. We value what we have known for years. We resist, as best we can, the firestorms of fashion. We are content to wait. We don’t hope for much. We are almost happy.