The Brown Season

They say that in Minnesota, we've got it all -- all four seasons, that is -- the warm spring, the hot-humid "lake days" of summer, the beautiful, colorful fall and the cold, snowy, lovely winter.  But, I'd like to contend that we've got another season, a dark, dismal and utterly frustrating season.  I like to call it the Brown Season.  The brown season is the time of utter discontent.  It is a time of general malaise and hatefulness.  A recent California transplant asked me "why didn't anyone tell me that 'Minnesota nice' is a bunch of bullshit?"  I told her it's not total bullshit.  She just caught us at a bad time.  The Brown Season spares no one.  The grass is dead, the ground is frozen solid, the snow is all gone, the trees are still bare and spring is no where in sight.  In recent years the Brown Season has come near the end of February or beginning of March.  Even though the days have grown longer, the cold continues.  The Brown Season is winter depression at the end of its rope.  Having been cooped up for months, women begin to refuse to cook dinner, or go out for dinner or shower or do anything at all, really, except sit on the couch encased in blankets and cats watching shamefully bad television like sitcoms and "reality" competitions.  When asked "Honey, what's wrong?" men are greeted with such irrational responses as "Iron Chef is not a show, it's a way of life!"  They slowly back out of the room and return to their own odd Brown Season cocoons – wood shops, studios, garages, computer rooms – whatever.  They'd like to leave the house but somehow can't find the motivation to actually do so.  The Brown Season transforms even normally happy winter people into disheveled shadows of themselves.  Too warm for winter sports like skiing and too cold for spring sports like biking, people resign themselves to the confines of the gym.  But, stuck on a treadmill like a caged animal with the man next to them dripping, nay, spraying sweat all over the place, the malaise and contempt for all other living things only grows and starts to fester. 

Co-workers call in sick, show up late, go to great lengths to avoid each other all day and leave early.  During the Brown Season, the office can be totally full yet eerily quiet – everyone simmering along in their own corners waiting for it to end.  In the Brown Season of the Northern Plains, even your cats will begin to hate you.  Restless and desperate for an open window they'll knock over the humidifier and chew holes in your good wool socks, blaming you fro the infernal delay of spring.  No birds will visit your yard save the crow feasting on the bunny you ran over in the drive way.  This god-awful suspension of time between seasons tortures all beings.  The Brown Season will not break for weeks in which time you will grip white-knuckled to the edge of reason, dwelling on insignificant events and conversations, inventing feelings of mistrust and doubt about everyone around you.   

But then, one day, it will rain.

It will sprinkle and drizzle and pour down all day. 

And the Brown Season will end. 

The rain will wash it away along with the dirt and the salt and the dead things.  You and everyone else will let go a collective sigh of relief. 

Minnesota has five seasons to be sure.