Jenifer’s Journal: Groundhog Day

I’m sitting here at the end of my daughter’s dining room table on this beautiful, apres-blizzard Sunday morning, trying to adapt to the sleek intricacies of her fancy laptop as I ham-handedly tap out my overdue column. 

See, I was supposed to submit it Saturday, but by Thursday I had a full-blown case of blizzard-brain — maybe it was  morbid pleasure that Channel 12’s weather people took as they gleefully kept upping the projected snowfall totals, or my inadequate faith that all of the many elderly trees in my yard would actually manage to remain vertical, or both.

So I invited myself for a weekend stay at my daughter’s house where she and I, along with my son-in-law, two grandchildren and their two Chihuahuas, would attempt to survive the coming snowstorm and drang, except for my poor cats that I was cravenly abandoning to fate and the good—saintly offices of my intrepid neighbors. 

There was a lot to deal with — anxiety, guilt and the hordes of survivalists I had to contend with at the IGA as I fought to capture some kitty litter. Of course, craven or not, my safety didn’t come cheap.

I paid for it by being sent out to “play” with grandchildren at the height of the maelstrom, being trapped in a single “easy chair” barely able to breathe under the weight of two healthy grandchildren, 6 and 8, for the total running time of three movies in a row (mercifully, only one starring Adam Sandler), and acquiescing to ongoing mandatory participation in activities ranging from puppet plays, to Charades to extended indoor basketball practice.

As unique to the situation as the above circumstances might have been, there was also something uncomfortably familiar about them. I realize now it was, in fact, the ubiquitous constellation of anxiety, guilt and flimsy excuses which surrounded them.

The windy paragraph above was written mainly due to the incontrovertible fact I haven’t gotten my column in on time. “Rationalization” rhymes with “procrastination” for a reason, you know. Same old, same old: The dog ate my homework or, for my purposes here, the groundhog did.

Because, it’s a clear example of our neo-understanding of Groundhog Day.

Originally based on a Pennsylvania-Dutch superstition with roots in a German legend about a badger, what became the traditional Groundhog Day was first celebrated on February 2, 1840.

It remained merely a quaint custom in America and Canada, one that involved bringing out a groundhog which, if it saw its shadow, would portend six more weeks of winter, a relatively underwhelming event in itself, not to mention a frequently inaccurate one. Likely, Groundhog Day would’ve remained a quaint and humble custom were it not for the watershed moment in groundhog history that occurred nearly 30 years ago.

Released on Feb. 12, 1993 by Columbia Pictures, directed by Harold Ramis and starring Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell, “Groundhog Day” would come to permanently retool our conventional associations with that term and, for some of us, expand its meaning into the flat-out metaphysical. Here is the tiny thumbnail plot from IMDb.com: “A self-centered Pittsburgh weatherman finds himself inexplicably trapped in a small town as he lives the same day over and over again.” 

That description is the merest tip of a philosophical iceberg that, over the decades, has attracted a cult following. Here’s an excerpt from an article, “The Philosophy of Groundhog Day,” by Benjamin McEvoy, just one of the movie’s many fans that I found online:

“Because we are all living the same day over and over again … each day is a chance, a blank slate, from which to work. The macro’s in the minutiae. Every day we have the same conversations with loved ones. Every day we make dinner, go to work, exercise, read. Or perhaps we don’t. Perhaps we argue with our loved ones about everything. Perhaps we have the same argument we’ve had for years, just dressed up a little different. We might waste money on takeout, call in sick to work, skip the gym and vegetate in front of bland ad-heavy television … but we all have the same day.”

Yes, that idea that we all have a personal choice of how to spend exactly the same 24 hours celebrates the wisdom of “one day at a time.” The movie also underscores the eternal truth that whatever life lessons each of us is meant to learn, about self-justification and procrastination, for instance, will continue to show up again and again, until we learn them. Tedious to be sure, but in the end, redemptive. 

And that’s only some of the fertile fodder for contemplation the film provides. Hope some of you watched it yesterday, unless it isn’t yesterday for you, but Groundhog Day — again.