Happy Groundhog Eve

My father’s mother, my grandmother, died on Groundhog’s Day in the 1980s. My father is the youngest of eight children so I was one of the younger set. Grandma Cummings had 27 grandchildren (that I know of) and a bunch of great grandchildren (many of whom I’ve recently met) and an easy way about her.

I have always loved Groundhog’s Day. It is so silly, the kind of thing that deserves minor celebration—in the form of a chuckle. I did not love the movie. But I do like the mammal. We had big ones in the woods and fields near where I grew up in the wilds of Suffern, NY. Also known as a woodchuck and in some circles, unkiddingly, as a land beaver, the groundhog is actually a rodent in the marmot family of squirrels. Marmots in the Rockies are cuter. Groundhogs in the east, at least in Suffern, sometimes grew to be the size of a beagle. Good eatin’, I guess, in western Rockland County. (Most of them got their grub in New Jersey? Or perhaps, daringly, in the hollers and creeks of Stag Hill populated by the “Jackson Whites?”)

It is endearing to have a holiday that is centered upon this funny creature. I get a little sad that my grandmother had no choice in the date of her expiration. I do say, though, the mixture of solemn mortal awareness with a light hearted marmot visual happily sums up the condition of living at just about the right place for me. To experience that on February 2, which, if to look at the calendar with a fresh eye as if pretending not to know its meaning, one would shrug off its inauspicious locus. But then in remembering its significance, well, that adds a loop of surprising mirth to the whole thing.