In The Bleak Mid-Winter

You can count on two things in winter: first,that they days will get shorter and shorter and second, my whining will get longer and longer.  If you ever wanted a fellow heat miser to commiserate with, ask a poet, apparently they’ve felt this way for a long time. They have called winter a Dirge (Burns), an Old Man (Frost) or my personal favorite, an imperial affliction sent us of the air (Dickenson).  This time of year, when the weather lays over us like a wet wool blanket, is always  a bit too still, a bit too dim, a bit too grey for my liking.  At New Years I love to reminisce and plan with what is always too much enthusiasm for the year to come, but somewhere mid-month things get sluggish and a melancholy funk sets in. Usually about time I will never get back, and the long road of work that is still ahead.

Then there’s today. Today I bundled the baby up and took her out to experience the snow. It amazes me the way that my chirpy little bird always hushes the instant we step outside. I see babies react this way toward nature all the time and it makes me wonder if perhaps they understand something that the rest of us have forgotten.  I walked along the snowy sidewalks with Phoebe strapped to my chest, quietly bobbing up and down, eyes wide open. I stepped carefully to keep my balance on the parts that were trampled into massive ice sheets. As I walked, I pointed out different things for her to look at: trees, birds, sheep.  When we came into the house she was totally limp in sleep. I pulled her out of the carrier like a little rag doll and let her rest on the floor. She was pink and perfect as I sat beside her, more than content to just watch her tiny back go up and down. To me, the earnestness of moments like these are what motherhood, and life in general, are all about.  I want to go along collecting them like berries, or wild flowers, or anything else you pick along the way and take home to press, can, dry, and preserve. If at the end of my life, all I have to show for it is arms full of beautiful moments, then I’ll say I’ve done alright. Even if they’re quiet. Even if they’re only my own. Some of them would never happen any other way.

January will never be my June. But today?  Yeah, I could do a few more of these.