Truth Thursday
I am writing my annual dead-of-winter column much earlier than usual this year. Perhaps that is because everything this year is a bit unusual.
Recently I was driving through our local urban park – a lovely way to cross the county and enjoy the drive on the way to the ice skating rink. We had had a very small snow and ice storm a few days earlier, and the banks of the road where the daffodils will cluster in the spring are now covered, appropriately, in white.
But the amazing thing about this drive was that we were also covered by a blanket of fog.
I usually associate fog with warm, misty weather. And while the temperature was hovering in the 30s, it was clearly on its way to warming up. Again. We have had a mild winter this year, a wonderful antidote to the past two years where our region has lived through snowpocalyse and months of unending bitter cold.
Today, as I look outside my window, the winter sun simply cannot help itself and it’s breaking through the drear, as it has been all winter long. The temps are supposed to rise to the mid-50s.
I’ll take it.
Another bit of unusualness this winter is the feeling of lightness and joy I’ve been experiencing. By mid-February, I am usually stewing in a sun-deprived funk, feeling fallow and blue. Even my mid-winter birthday, buffeted by the deep reds and pinks of Valentines Day, generally can’t get me past the feeling of sadness that comes over me as I watch our barren yard succumb to snow and ice and cold.
But this year, I will not be here for my birthday. In fact, as this blog gets posted, I will already be in Israel for a two-week work trip. Israel, where, although it is the rainy season, it is far warmer and sunnier than we can ever expect in our part of the hemisphere. So instead of worrying about getting older and grayer, I expect to be surrounded by friends and colleagues and the sounds and smells of a Mediterranean culture that I love when I reach the next year of my impending dotage.
And another reason this winter feels lighter and airier than those in recent memory. For the past two years, my family has been weathering the effects of the recession on our jobs and income. It has been a long haul, but we seem to have finally landed in a more solid place, with jobs that we both love and a feeling of security that has been eluding us for a while.
We are grateful.
My daughter’s bat mitzvah is four short months away. My stepsister just had her first baby. My teenage son is pulling A’s in school and planning for his college journey. He has also asked me if I would take a yoga class with him (yes, I really just said that.) My ten-year-old is shooting baskets, hitting balls and hugging me all the time as he prepares for his move into middle school and separation.
I’ll take it.
This is not to say that there hasn’t been some sadness this year as well – mostly in the form of friends losing parents. Some health issues with people I love. Dear friends who lost their house in a freak tree-falling accident, and who won’t be able to move back in for a long time. Close friends still battling the lingering effects of the recession.
But this is the stuff of life. It is all bearable and manageable so long as it’s balanced with friendship, family and love, the coziness of an unexpected winter fog and the bright warmth of the winter sun.
Photo by That Canadian Grrl via Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/thatgrrl/2176371901/
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