It’s Spring in Wisconsin, but today we had 20 mph winds and a 25 degree wind chill with snow showers. A day like today fits the mood: unpredictable, biting and indiscriminate. Two days ago the sun shone and the temperature reached the high 60’s. It was sparkly, crystal-clear, warm.
Our street is noisy on most mornings of the school year with the chatter of children waiting for the school bus to take them to the schools half a block away from my front door. Even on the coldest days they are out climbing snow banks, dancing to keep warm. I watch them from my writing desk, they and the stream of yellow buses going by, shadows of kids in all the windows, keep me company.
Now, the street is silent. Schools are closed, the sign outside the high school reads: Warriors, we hope to see you soon! The streets in town, as everywhere, are very quiet but for an occasional walker, bicycle, or passing car.
Yet one creature that seems immune to the pall of dread over everything is the certain breed of young man they grow here in the upper Midwest who, on those summery days like the one earlier this week, try to make as much noise as possible. They have abandoned their snowmobiles and roar by at odd moments, breaking the silence, in their ATV’s or souped-up testosterone-detailed diesel pick-ups. The guttural explosions of these vehicles replace the more familiar groan of the school buses and chatter of the children.
These boys remind me of the male pigeons who can also be seen this time of year strutting their stuff, both obscene and silly at once, for the females. What comes to mind for me when one of these vehicles blasts down the otherwise empty street, one of the many empty streets of town, by empty stores and restaurants and schools, is a weird vision: an abandoned state fairgrounds or amusement park on a sunny summer day, no visitors, no one running the rides or making cotton candy, no smells of hundreds of hand-held food items. Or maybe there would be one ride going, the tilt-a-whirl, let’s say, without any passengers. Then out of nowhere comes a twenty-something in a T-shirt, barreling through Food Avenue in his truck with an air of reckless pride and showmanship. No one to notice him.
It’s not that I begrudge them their fun, although the noise they make grates on me. It’s that their Spring ritual is playing out in what feels like the movie set for a ghastly horror film. Jack Gilbert says that we are meant to go on with life even with all the suffering around us all the time. That it is disrespectful of the sufferer for us not to engage with the world. I tended to agree with him before this, but now, I’m finding the suffering almost too much to bear.