Febate (February 8th, pronounced “Feb-8”)

I was fortunate to be raised in a home where there was a lot of jocularity and good humor. I can remember a lot of good times that were really just based on everyone in my family acting nonsensically silly.

One such occasion happened on February 8th. I forget the year, though I am reasonably certain that it was in the early 1980s, when I was a teenager. Growing up in Pennsylvania, the beginning of February was always the time of the winter doldrums. I can remember battling through many snow storms right around this time of year. But even when there was no snow, there were always a lot of icy roads and very, very cold temperatures. And it seemed as though it would never end. Spring seemed so distant.

So, one year, my father designated February 8th as the mid-point of winter. I’m not sure how he calculated it, but he asserted that “Febate” was the date when the winter was at its deepest, darkest, and drabbest. (Maybe it is the midpoint between the first day of winter and first day of spring?)

To “celebrate” Febate, he composed a limerick commemorating the day, lamenting the cold weather and the insurmountable journey back to warm weather, and put it on the refrigerator for all of us to see.

My first reaction to the poem was that it was cute, and that it was just another one of Dad’s silly shenanigans. Much to my surprise, though, one of my sisters responded in kind with a limerick of her own, and displayed it on the fridge. Then one of my other sisters wrote one. At some point I joined in also, and we ended up with a group of poems on the refrigerator, all commemorating this self-manufactured day of observance. The tradition continued for a year or two as I recall, but faded as all of us kids (four in my family, three sisters and me) went to college.

When I think of our Febate poems, my thoughts go to a bigger question. That is, I wish I had saved more stuff from my childhood. I don’t think we still have any of the Febate poems (if we do, and my family wants to post any of them, that would be wonderful). But whether it was poems, or pictures, or cassette tapes, I occasionally will have a memory and think, “I wish I still had that.” Not that I don’t have some memorabilia from my childhood—I do. But if I had known that I would have these thoughts in my forties, I would have saved a whole lot more of that stuff.

But I am thankful for keepsakes that I did save, and more so for the good times and the good memories. And, I have been surprised as an adult to find out that some “stuff” that I wish I had saved has in fact been kept by my parents or sisters. As a quick example, one of my brothers-in-law recently told me that someone in the family has a cassette recording of me as an eight-year old, doing a mock play-by-play of a hockey game. I’ve got to get to the bottom of that one. That would certainly be a cherished personal artifact, and maybe it’s not too late to get it transferred to compact disc for further preservation.

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy Febate today, and with all of the monster snow storms this year, I hope we head into warmer weather sooner rather than later.