This Lenten Life

The cruelest month? ‘Taint April, Mr. Eliot. It’s February in Brooklyn: bare trees snarling at us; snow still piled on the shady side of the street; surly young men with sweatshirt hoods shrouding their faces, looking like so many Unabombers; nervous young mothers and take-charge nannies clogging the grimy sidewalks, pushing strollers that wrap their young’ns in plastic; sad brownstones gray with a kind of bone-deep moisture; the endless analysis of NBA contracts, the hair-shirt advent of Lent (how’s that for mixing liturgical seasons?).

But there’s hope. Lent’s privations will lead to Easter. Tulips will bloom and bare trees will smile. The hooded swains will bare their heads to seek their Jills. The byzantine NBA will give way to the Amen Corner at Augusta National. Children will frolic in parks while radiant parents and caretakers enjoy a picnic lunch, leaving the sidewalks free for us surly old men on meaningless jaunts.

We know these things are true because a flock of millionaires and wannabes are at this very moment spitting sunflower seeds before heading to the golf course in the gentler winters of Florida and Arizona. We all would have been among them at one time if not for the indisputable fact that hitting a curveball is impossible in the real world. This feat requires a magical incantation passed down among a select few from Nap Lajoie and Wee Willie Keeler (“hit ’em where they ain’t) to Joe Mauer and Albert Pujols. Will Dan Brown reveal it in his next “Da Vinci Code” spin-off?

Forlorn as we are in this somber period, itching to take to the local muni track with yet another new swing and putting stroke, the boys of summer at winter training (hey, it ain’t spring yet) fill us with hope of life after death. They have convinced us to embrace each new minute of sunlight that appears with every revolution of the planet until the vernal equinox, an event for mourning because the hourglass is turned over and the daytime begins to dwindle ever so sneakily.

Before that day in June, we predict the Kansas City Royals and the Pittsburgh Pirates will meet in the 2010 World Series and Eldrick Woods will retire from golf to become a Buddhist monk.