Well, the orange/yellow leaves have mostly blown off of the trees across the street now and the view out my window gets decidedly darker earlier and earlier in the day now. The view will hold considerably less interest very soon, so i turn to sounds instead. The purring cat beside me, the whir of a motor, the fireworks popping in the distance, my daughter laughing. Now is the time for hibernation, the time to burrow down and pull up the covers and clasp a mug of hot chocolate between my cold hands.
I used to be more hardened in this kind of weather and would simply wrap up and go outside anyway. But now, more things start to go wrong in my body at this time of year, not big things, just more things, and I’ve learned that any energy spent unnecessarily is energy wasted. I’m tired and fatigued, I do less, I enjoy less, I smile less. The seasons of my life are changing and I realise how unappreciative I have been of the time past that I shall have no more.
Of course along with that knowledge comes the knowledge that I am not appreciating my time here at the moment either, and that I will soon look back and wish I had spent it and cared for it better. It all seems such a hopeless cycle from this stage in the year. Unrelenting cold and dark and the endless replay of the same themes again and again. All I can do from this point in the year, is keep warm and wait for spring. I always do, and spring always comes. . . but it looks such a long way to there from the beginning of the winter.
Yes, I realise that winter is not really here until mid December, and now we are only beginning November. But in my chosenland, as I have said so often before, I feel as if I have been robbed of my seasons. They blend together for me now because of where I came from. What was once four, for me, is now only two. And both of them grey and rainy. Only one is colder. And I know you will find my viewpoint a bit unkind and unforgiving, but the truth of it is how I feel and how I see it. And I can’t be any more honest than that.
Because I remember younger days in the homeland over summertime nights, in green country fields with friends, lying on our backs, the fresh fragrance of hay and grasses in my nose, looking up at the stars in a pitch black sky and watching meteor showers, listening to crickets and watching fireflies. I remember winter snow days off from school, building snow forts and tobogganing down the steep hill behind the cemetery by my friend’s house, and trudging back up again, knee deep in crisp white snow that would last for days. I remember mountainsides hemming in the river valley, completely covered with autumn colored trees, a delicious quilted carpet of red and orange and yellow and brown. I remember the spring flowers, the sweet smell of lilacs most of all, and my mother’s crocus that would greet me by the front door in March and tell me that things were moving on and it was time.
Moving on was exciting to me then. And now I resist it, I push back and bolt the door to keep it out, along with the cold of a new season. I don’t look for new seasons now, in the trees and in my life both. And I can see myself sitting here wrapped in this warm fluffy blanket with this hot mug of chocolate for quite some time, and not noticing the crocuses when they reach out of the ground to point me where I am to go next. Maybe I missed them already?
The fireworks sound louder through my curtained window, and I realise that I left my attic window viewpoint too soon. . . It’s too late now to see them. By the time you hear the bang, the pretty sparks are gone.
