My Totally Favorite Month

LEON

My favorite month? Well now, let me see. I’ve always kind of liked October? The trees show off their fall colors, and there’s football, and the football pool at the office, and the air feels fresher than it did all summer. I like apples, and even though the supermarket has fresh apples any time of the year, supposedly “fresh,” well, October is the time to get them from the local orchards, and they just taste better, and it’s good for our local farmers, and it’s also time for six-packs of cider doughnuts to show up at the farm stands next to the apples. Pumpkins! Love ’em. Orange. Fat. Happy. Did I mention football? Oh yeah and Halloween is fun for the little kids, and people put up those inflatable displays in their front yards, and there’s candy corn everywhere and people just seem to get into the spirit of the whole thing. McSweeney’s always runs their “decorative gourd season motherf----ers” post in October, I just love that, it makes me chuckle every time. Yeah. October.

QUINCE 

I like February. Poor old February. To me, “February” sounds like you’ve just had a blowout and are still trying to drive on the flat, febru - febru - febru. Almost everybody likes May and June, but February needs a friend, a support group of sorts, no doubt about it. See, it’s a pretty good month, really; the days of winter are lengthening, and you can shovel snow up until 7:00 or so, and sometimes you have to. You can start your maple sugaring about the 25th; there’s a thought both hot and sweet. You get these tremendously heavy snow storms that make an ice palace of your neighborhood. Just clearing the front walk can make you feel like a hero. You feel vital! Useful! How often does that happen? You find your axe in the shed. You shovel a path to the wood pile, clean off the chopping block, and split a stack of wood for the wood stove. Suddenly you’re super-strong, you’re the Provider, you’re The One Who Brings Heat into the House.

DENISE

I’d like to stitch together my favorite 30 or 31 days from the year, and make up a full month that way. That would be my favorite month. I’d be sure to have one or two of those dazzling sunny days in January after a big storm, that warm day in spring when all of the daffodils have come out in bloom, that superb day in July when you’re up at the lake or just rolling your lawnmower out of the shed, and you look around and say to yourself, wow, I should remember this. Today is one of those days. You don’t get many days like this.

A month of those days, and I’d be good.

ARTHUR

My favorite month is January. That’s a little unusual, I guess. I don’t mind being miserable, you see. When you’re already prepared to be miserable, you’ll never feel let down. You’ll never be disappointed. It’s the same as, if there’s nowhere you have to go, you’ll never be late. February is a close second, but it doesn’t make the cut because it’s short. Not enough misery.

CLARE

My favorite month isn’t one of the twelve months. I feel like that nomenclature is oppressive and outdated. And did you ever see a picture of the Roman God Janus? I mean, really.

So I can’t just single out one of the regular months and call it my “favorite.” With me it’s more like, I really like the four-week period from about the 21st of May to the 21st of June, you know, the final weeks of spring. It needs its own name. Why not Flora? Why can’t we have something like that?

DANIELLE

I’m in favor of renaming our months. I’m not happy with them the way they are. So I’m not about to declare a preference for “June.” Moon, swoon, cartoon, balloon, spittoon. Or “December.” It sounds like something with sharp teeth and a short fuse. And it ends in “brrrr.” We get it already, December is cold.

Instead, I’d like to imagine the month of Bliss. Or the month of Pancakes. The month of Sweet Dreams. The Alpha, and the Omega. The Yin, and the Yang. Or the month of Danielle, named after me, Danielle. Or, the month of Sailboats, or the month of Honeybees. “I was born on Honeybees 30th.” It doesn’t have to be those, just something different from what we’ve had for so long without ever asking why.

Speaking of why, I understand why you need to have twelve individual months, because of the (roughly) twelve cycles of the moon balloon spittoon. I’m not dumb. I know you can’t have a total of five months, or twenty-five. At least, not until those lunar mining industries of the future manage to knock the Moon out of its orbit and into outer space. After that, the Earth will wobble on its axis quite a bit, and you won’t have the tides or the weather or the seasons that are familiar to us now. But you could have as many months as you wanted.

LINDA 

I like November because it’s Thanksgiving and afterwards we put away the leftovers and the dishes and the furniture, and also the menfolk who ate too much and drank too much and nodded off in front of the TV, and then me and Nora and Deena and Joycie get all bundled up and head out to a late-night Dunks for some triple-sugar hot cappucinos, XXXL, and then we hit the stores at midnight, wherever and whenever the big sales are happening. That’s what we’re there for, to get Christmas done early and save us some big bucks, yow-yow! It’s work, sure it’s work, but we like it, we make it fun.

You get my meaning? The women have to do it. The men are no good at it. The men all wait until December 24th and then come home with something half-assed and want you to wrap it. It’s not their favorite thing, Christmas. Or Thanksgiving either, now that I think about it. I don’t know what their favorite thing is, really. With Frank, it might be Bud Light.

BUDDY

Betcha can’t guess what my favorite month is! Well I’ll tell you, it’s all about a jolly old fat guy with a red suit and a red hat and black boots and a bushy white beard, and colorful lights, and snow all around. And our dear Savior, born in a stable in Bethlehem, yes. Twelve days, three kings, eight tiny reindeer, the elves, the evergreen tree, a choir singing carols, the whole shootin’ match. You got it, it’s December!

Of course, it’s a little different up where we are, in the cell block. You need a good memory and a good imagination, and Management won’t be helping you in that respect, or any other. You need to keep your wits about you too, understand? You need to sleep with one eye open, like I used to do when I was a little kid on Christmas Eve: “I saw Mommy kissing Santa Claus, underneath the mistletoe last night …”

NAN

I don’t have a favorite month. There’s something wrong with every one of them. I get very depressed. Time hangs heavy. Food tastes like cardboard. People at work whisper behind my back, sssis-ssswis. I notice my reflection in a store window and I’m disgusted at what I see.

ROB

My favorite month is September. It means summer’s over, and it’s back to the grind for another long winter. And the song lyrics come to mind in a flood of melancholy:   

Oh, it’s a long, long while from May to December
But the days grow short
When you reach September

Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach
I feel it in the air, the summer’s out of reach

Try to remember the kind of September, when you were a tender and callow fellow

Now the days are short, I’m in the autumn of my years
And I think of my life as vintage wine, from fine old kegs
From the brim to the dregs … it was a very good year

Oooooo! So poignant, you could just hug yourself.

CATHY 

I like March. Henry Beetle Hough said it: March is Marchy!

KEVIN 

May is my favorite. Up in New England, it’s birds singing, flowers blooming, backyard vegetables growing. A month full of promises made and promises fulfilled. Often chilly and rainy for the first two weeks, May ends up rewarding you with ever-lengthening and ever-warming days.

So I’ll take May, but with this proviso. Statistics show that if the Red Sox are out of it in late May, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to claw their way back to the top by September. Technically it’s possible, but it almost never happens, not for them, not for any team. So you can take stock of your Sox in May, and decide whether you, like me, might just want to let them go again, for another year.

CHARLOTTE

I like August. Hot, humid, steamy, not often rainy, great for days at the beach, one right after another. Like anything else, the sweetest part of a beach day is in the anticipation. Pack the cooler, pack the suits, pack the blanket and the towels, drive down to where the sky begins to look all mother-of-pearl where it meets the ocean at the horizon. Beautiful! We’re here! Hi, everybody! Last one in is a rotten egg!

That’s why I put up one of those rustic-looking “To the Beach” signs in my kitchen, pointed towards the garage, and I have to tell you, the ocean is at least a three-hour drive from here. Call me a landlocked lady who loves the saltwater life. I love digging in the sand, the seabirds crying, fried clams and burgers and onion rings at the clam shack, a lighthouse and boats off in the distance, hydrangeas blooming electric blue, surf and dunes and sandpipers and kites.

Actually, I don’t get to the beach much anymore. My doctor advises against it. Skin cancer. There’s no shade at the beach of course, unless you bring an umbrella. That’s the whole idea of the beach, you’re supposed to be out in the sun, soaking it up.

Also, the water is too cold, even in August, it always takes me forever to get in. Yeah, the “rotten egg.” And I don’t like the way I look now, in a swimsuit. My bad, but it makes me feel self-conscious. Price of gas too, there’s that. So what I anticipate, in August, on the morning of Beach Day, when we have it, is something that used to happen a lot when I was younger but now only happens sporadically. You’ll see me up on the bluff, with my dog, who isn’t even allowed on the beach, and we’ll be apart from everyone, looking out over the sand and the beachgoing beachgoers and the restless waves extending to the sharp line of the horizon, and making do with our bland sightseeing, and me having my old memories.

TAMI

My favorite month? Is that supposed to be a real question? Who are you, anyway? Are you working for the Feds? I know what you clowns are up to in your off-hours down at that pizza place, don’t tell me I don’t. I know what I know and I know my rights too, and I have a right not to be pestered with personal questions of a demeaning nature that you have no right to ask, none whatsoever!!