The Four Seasons

Antonio Vivaldi produced his masterful violin concerto, “The Four Seasons,” three hundred years ago. It remains one of the Baroque period’s most requested compositions. As I was growing up the march of the seasons did not depend on our kitchen calendar but was marked by the flow of events. Fall, the beginning of my year, meant the start of school. That season lasted through Thanksgiving and gave way to winter with the coming of Christmas. Sooner or later the ice and snow would yield to showers flowers, and the inevitable signs that spring had come. Finally the end of the school year meant that summer had at last arrived.

Another way to look at the seasons reduces them to just two—summer and winter, or spring and fall. My grandmother marked the flow of the year with Spring/Fall House cleaning. Windows were washed, inside and out. Everything that could be scrubbed was scrubbed. The highlight was the all-family transfer of rugs. The four heavy woolen ones were hauled to the back yard, thrown over clotheslines and beaten with a device created for that purpose. Everyone in the family got to share in this task. These winter rugs were then hauled to the attic and the lighter ones were hauled down and whacked until the there was no longer a show of dust. Six months later the routine was duplicated in reverse.

Here in Southern California the march of the seasons is not that clear. I have seen warm Christmas days and ninety degree weather in March. Most of the time temperatures are moderate, and any given day would probably be a replica of yesterday or even of any day last month. Even so, August and September can be like an oven.

What has further impacted the modest flow of the year is COVID-19. There seems to be little day to day variation in our activities. With rare exceptions my calendar is blank, and I may go a week without even looking at it in order to determine what I ought to be doing. There may be occasional ZOOM events, but I still often lose focus on what I need to do. In the last half year I have had two medical appointments, but little else. Every day seems like every other day.
It occurs to me, however, that is how most people have lived, working seven days in the week, possibly in the western world taking a break to go to church. Cows need to be milked and fed twice a day no matter what day it is. Child care cannot be put aside because it happens to be Tuesday.

I have gradually been aware of how fortunate we middle-class Americans are. The great variety we usually experience has rarely been duplicated by most of the human family that day after day, month after month season after season they must devote every available hour to keeping themselves and their families fed and sheltered.

Henry David Thoreau once observed that “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” If we do not fit that dismal recipe, perhaps it is not because we are so good, or have been uniquely blessed, but only because we are lucky, and recognizing where life has put us should make every day uniquely precious. So I will find the season glorious because I am alive, sheltered, fed and cared for. Perhaps the next time I hear Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” I will be reminded of how the flow of the days and the seasons have landed on this Lucky Duck.

All beautiful the march of days, as seasons come and go;
the hand that shaped the rose hath wrought the crystal of the snow,
hath sent the hoary frost of heaven, the flowing waters sealed,
and laid a silent loveliness on hill and wood and field.

O thou from whose unfathomed law the year in beauty flows,
thyself the vision passing by in crystal and in rose;
day unto day doth utter speech, and night to night proclaim
in ever changing words of light the wonder of thy name.
Francis Wile