The Squeeze

Because happiness, at its root, requires calories

Maybe there’s a better name
For the end of winter,
But I like to call it “The Squeeze.”

For my ancestors,
This was the time
When thin soup was made
From the last potatoes, 
soft and sprouting in the root cellar.
When coarse bread was fearfully baked 
From the last grains of wheat.
Too cold yet for spring greens. 
The garden too hard yet for the plow.
When prayer became desperate
And hope wore as thin and threadbare 
As the Socks of Theseus,
Darned so many times
Did the original socks even exist?
When no one danced or sang
Because happiness, at its root, 
Requires calories.

The end of winter is different now.
The space between death and life
Is so much wider in the modern world.

But I call it The Squeeze
Because the echoes of those lean times
Still constrict my heart
And strike fear in my ancient bones.
It’s when the bank account is so low,
You wish you hadn’t been 
So generous at Christmas.
When eating out is not an option
And the tax man comes calling
And the rent is past due
And the pipeline is empty
And all you need is a miracle
Or even just a little mercy.
And the walls feel like they’re closing in
And you wonder why you’re so sad all the time.

That’s The Squeeze.

When all you can do is not enough.
When faith becomes raw and real.
When you start asking around
And you realize that everyone’s hungry,
And that there’s someone worse off than you,
And you find it in your pocket—
An extra dollar, maybe two—to spare for them. 
And you learn that enough 
Was less than you thought before.
And the kindness of a neighbor
Means more than it did before.

And you are reminded once again that 
The Squeeze is cyclical—
A Law of the Universe.
Here, where Death and Birth meet,
It’s dark and close and necessary,
With unknown forces bearing down on you,
Pushing you into the light of spring,
Making you more grateful for the sun,
More human in the world,
And kinder than you would have been 
If summer were perpetual.

And as you turn the rich black soil, 
And plant your hopeful seeds,
The sun warming your bare arms,
You feel the echoes of those ancestral hallelujahs
Bursting forth from your ancient heart.
Glory be!
You did not die!
Your path continues
Another turn around the sun.

---

The old barn at my home in Joplin, Missouri. Still abandoned, 13 years after the Joplin tornado swept through my hometown. Still forgotten. And now, the barn doors won’t open any more than this because the trees on either side grew up in the tracks and block the way. I can still squeeze through, and each year I visit, wondering if this is the year I won’t get through the doors.

I wrote “The Squeeze” last spring, around this time. I remember how stressful that winter was. My kids’ dad had just relinquished his parental rights and I was paying off the last of my attorney bills. My real estate business always slows down in winter and my bank account was getting low. You’d think I would remember that.

I know that the squeeze of those cold months—January, February, and March—truly are cyclical. Seasonal depression sets in after the holidays and you truly wonder whether business will ever pick up again, or whether you truly are washed up. It’s a sensation of fear and impending doom. You’d think that once you’ve identified the seasonality of lean times you would be better able to accept it.

But this year, it surprised me again—as if all of nature conspired to teach me a lesson. It was just like last March, and the March before that, and the March before that. I found myself once more pacing the floor in the early hours of the morning, unable to sleep, and eventually crumpled in a heap, sobbing my heart out and begging God for a little bit of goddam help.

A week later, the help came. My business started churning again like a frozen river thawing, revealing that under that thick layer of ice the water had always been moving.

And then I got together with a couple of dear writing friends and we compared notes. We were all coming out of the Squeeze—finally sensing some relief. Finally able to feel grateful again instead of just fearful.

Is it neglect or simply human forgetfulness when we break that way? When we slip into selective amnesia? When the memory of all those times when the divine has stepped in, showed up, and carried us seems most elusive?

Or is it evolutionarily adaptive, maybe even spiritually necessary to forget, and to feel forgotten by God? Perhaps the dark night cultivates empathy, a quality our world seems so desperately in need of.

Maybe an eternal summer really would harm our souls.