Psychotic Boyfriends

Spring is finally showing signs of arriving in Vermont. The crocuses are poking up their brave little heads, and the snow banks are melting, leaving behind their glacial loads of road grit and grime on the lawn. Yesterday, it was almost 60 degrees — the first time it has been that warm since ... since I can't remember when. Last October, maybe?

But no sooner have I washed and put away my winter parka and folded up my scarf, it’s back to blustery and cold, with a north wind beating back any warmth from the sun's rays. And what’s this? Snow in the forecast for Friday?

It makes me feel as if I'm dating a psychotic boyfriend. For no apparent reason, he's suddenly friendly and warm, making me forget completely about the dark days of winter when he was sullen and mean. He even gives flowers on these days. When perfect spring days arrive, I feel like dancing in the street. Throw open the windows! Let’s have a party!

But Psychotic Boyfriend throws these days at us just often enough (which isn’t anywhere near often enough) to allow us to weather the bad days — the days when it snows in May or the rain blows sideways and the furnace can’t possibly take the chill out of the air. These are the days that Psychotic Boyfriend has not taken his medication. It’s a wonder anyone puts up with his behavior.

Just as I'm threatening to walk out — to move south or west or to remote Pacific atolls where the sun always shines — Psychotic Boyfriend softens his blows, turns sunny and warm again, and cons me into sticking around. The earth radiates warmth, the grass turns green, the daffodils finally bloom, the air smells like spring. Now this is more like it. I even feel like inviting the neighbors over for a beer.

For over a decade, I lived out west, where the weather was much more even-tempered — excluding the occasional tornado. I didn’t have to drop everything on a nice day just to get outdoors. There was always the weekend, when the sun would almost always continue to shine. But while living there, I dated an actual psychotic boyfriend, who on a perfectly sunny day would verbally attack me for something — that I didn’t make enough money, that I wasn’t ambitious enough, that I didn’t cook enough. I stuck with him for over three years, living for those really good days when we would climb three 14,000-foot peaks in a day, or mountain bike Moab’s White Rim trail.

I finally dumped the real psychotic boyfriend and realized that I could still climb 14-ners and do long mountain bike rides without the mental anguish. I traded him in for a place where the weather is psychotic and the boyfriend (now husband) is not. Although I would dearly love to live where the sun shines more days than not, we are (I’m slowly realizing) not moving.

If this is the sacrifice I must make — a balanced man for unbalanced weather — then I guess I can’t put the parka away quite yet.

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In 1876, Mark Twain gave a speech entitled “The Weather.” In it, he said, “I reverently believe that the Maker who made us all makes everything in New England but the weather. I don't know who makes that, but I think it must be raw apprentices in the weather-clerk's factory who experiment and learn how, in New England, for board and clothes, and then are promoted to make weather for countries that require a good article, and will take their custom elsewhere if they don't get it.”