April, the month of fools and showers, has
come and gone again. Perhaps it’s a sign of
advancing age, or maybe it was just because no
grandchildren happened to be around at the time…
but whatever the reason, I didn’t get April
Fooled this year. My wife made a half-hearted
effort late in the day by stopping in mid-stride
across the living room and asking in an accusing
voice what I had spilled on my shirt, but I
caught myself before I looked. It was a small
victory, but I was proud of it. Then as I
reflected on it, I was drawn back into one of
history’s quagmires, the origin of calendars.
As noted in this column last month, in
ancient Rome the calendar was a mess. Some years
had over 400 days, while others had fewer than
300, and if you had the money you could bribe
local officials to set a particular holiday at a
time that was propitious to your own horoscope.
Julius Caesar put an end to that in 46 B.C.,
establishing January 1 as New Year’s Day and
mandating an orderly, if not quite perfect
calendar within the Roman Empire; but many
European countries kept their own traditions of
starting the year around the time of the Vernal
Equinox.
In France, April 1 was the traditional
New Year’s Day until 1582, when Pope Gregory
XIII instituted our present calendar; and even
then many of the provincial folk either didn’t
hear about it or refused to accept it, and
continued to hold their New Year’s revels on
April 1. More sophisticated citizens derided
their rustic countrymen as April Fools.
Eventually the January date became universally
accepted; but in the meanwhile, April 1 as a
festive date and opportunity for
institutionalized tomfoolery seemed too good an
idea to give up. So it was changed from New Year’s
to All Fool’s Day; and it not only stuck but
was exported, first to England and then to the
American colonies. Mark Twain referred to it as
the day when we remember what we are the other
364 days of the year. Personally, I think there
would be good historical precedent for moving it
to November 2.
T. S. Eliot called April the cruelest month,
but he had it all wrong; after the
meteorological mood swings of March, April is
usually a benign and gentle time. It may have an
occasional March-like windstorm or freeze, but
its reputation for inclemency is unjustified; by
and large, it’s the real beginning of spring.
The idea of April as the time of showers goes
back at least to Geoffrey Chaucer; I don’t
suppose anyone gets through high school without
memorizing the opening lines of the
"Canterbury Tales."
Several years ago
when my class had its 45th reunion, the guy who
had been the class clown spontaneously greeted
Miss Potesta, our English teacher, with "Whan
that Aprille with his shoures sote, the droghte
of Marche hath perced to the rote…."
Chaucer may have been right about the weather in
14th century England, but he missed the mark for
Emmitsburg. We did have our share of showers
this year, but Mrs. Beale, who has kept the
official records in this area since 1957, tells
me the wettest month in these parts is not
April. During the century from 1900 to 2000, the
average rainfall for the state of Maryland in
April was 3.96 inches; August, incredibly, had
an average of 4.43 inches.
I think April may be my favorite month. It’s
a time when you have the chance to appreciate
little things. Before the grass gets started, my
yard is covered with tiny flowers: Veronicas,
with ¼-inch blossoms half white and half pure
sky blue, chickweeds with ten minute white
slashes for petals, and miniature forests of
henbit with intricate pink and maroon flowers
that rival orchids in complexity.
Day and night,
the air is full of the sound of spring peepers,
tiny frogs with ventriloquistic powers. Chipping
sparrows, field sparrows, phoebes and tree
swallows were all back from the south before the
month was half gone; house wrens, barn swallows
and chimney swifts were here before it was over.
The flower beds erupted with daffodils and
tulips, just as my grandmother’s did in my
earliest Easter memories. And then there were
the trees.
We built our new house in 1989, and planted a
mixture of ornamental trees around it. In one
case we made the same mistake as the town; we
planted three Bradford Pears, not knowing that
their attractive white blossoms were designed to
be pollinated by flies and hence produce an
aroma like rotten meat. We fared better with the
others, flowering plums that bracket the house
with clouds of pink, and most spectacular of
all, a weeping cherry that my grandchildren call
the Icky tree. There’s a story behind the name—long
in time, if not in the telling.
In the spring of 1900, when my grandmother
was expecting a child, one of the neighbors had
a boarder who was a French-Canadian; he proposed
the name "Laliska" for the little girl
when she arrived, and Grandma agreed. But the
melodic French sound had no chance of surviving
against the West Virginia dialect; the name was
soon elided to "Liska," and then to
"Lisky." My mother was born several
years later, and as a toddler she called her big
sister "Icky;" and so was my aunt
known for the rest of her 92 years.
When she
visited our new home at age 90, she wanted to
contribute to the landscaping, and gave us some
money for a tree; we selected the weeping
cherry. It was not much to look at initially…
a 5-foot stalk and 3 straggly, grafted branches…
and when she saw it on her last visit in 1992 I
think she was a bit disappointed with the
choice, although she never would have said so.
But it flourished after that, and this April it
was in its fullest glory, towering over the
corner of the garage and spreading graceful
sprays of pink blossoms into the driveway. From
the beginning we started taking pictures of the
grandchildren standing under it at Easter, and
as they have increased in number and size, the
Icky tree has become one of their connections to
their family’s history. Most of them are too
young to remember Icky, but they know she was
here. A little thing, perhaps; but in an
overcrowded, harried, computer-driven world, we
need things like that.