Like a lot of South Coasters, I go from laughing to cursing about the weather of late. We’d like some sign of a shift towards spring. Is it too much to ask for a pocket of warm air to tell us that the wait won’t be long? A warble from a returning bird?
Not so long ago, all this living in a snow globe made me glow. Now it’s just wearing me down as with a relationship that’s gone bust. This is what I would say if I could say:
Winter Winter!
I’ll pine no more. Let’s admit it, we don’t get along as much as we did before. I’ve taken such a beating: the cold, the excessive shoveling, the tiresome dressing up, and all the problems that you caused… Delays, icy footing, dangerous travel not to mention your constant interference and intrusion at the oddest moments. How long can one endure?
It was a time when I needed your presence – you sent chills down my spine and put color in my cheeks. I lost myself in your whiteness, but now you’re like a parasitic hanger-on, an overextended guest, who is monopolizing me. No matter how deeply I chip away, you’re icy to the core. Oh, there were a few days when you started to melt, but then I had to feel you freeze up all over again and that gets old.
The next time you hear from me, I will be locked in a warm and rapturous embrace in the greenest glade filled with sweet blossoms and a lighter spirit. Less you think I was sinking to your level, be assured, I will rise above it and feel the sunshine tomorrow!
Goodbye Old Man.
The need for change isn’t to say that all is lost regarding winter. If it’s any consolation, the snow will magnificently refresh the groundwater and protect the perennials that are still asleep. We can also get recharged by looking through seed catalogs and garden magazines…
The human decision to label the seasons and expect them to comply in a consistent manner showing their best is about as real as expecting everything in life to go as planned. The same compulsion finds us looking ahead to spring no matter what the weather is today. It is a hope inherent in our psyches, and humans need to have that.
My silly rant aside, I really do try to find the positives in the here and now and even play a mental game when I’m out for a walk through what often appears as a frostbitten landscape. I look for 10 things that bring satisfaction to my senses and a fast-forward to the summertime that seems such a long way off. Perhaps it will be stiflingly hot, and I will want to disparage summer as I have done here with the winter.
The distant sound of spring seemed closer earlier this week as I heard a few syllables of bird song in the morning and again on a quiet, terribly cold, dark silent night when the chill wind pulled a wind chime very softly but audibly to life.
“We should be like a couple of hot tomatoes, but you’re as cold as yesterday mashed potatoes” – from A Fine Romance, lyrics by Dorothy Fields.
The Seaside Gardener
By Laura McLean