Tag Archives: seasons

Where the Heart Was

Posted on by under Guest, Losing Place

Home is the grit and gray of streets and parking lots and the widest freeway in the world. It’s being glad for a commuter train, so you can read while you sit in traffic. It’s the surprise of one of the largest urban parks in the United States, offering green respite. It’s watching the trails in that park erode,  years of play degrading into memory.

In the fall, after 32-and-a-half years in my hometown, I left in a rented truck with husband, dogs, bicycles, and a few scraps more, for a 2500-mile move to the north.

Here in this place, everything is different. Things I thought I knew slipped away when I wasn’t looking.

This place is beautiful. I ride my bike from the house to views that evoke the word ‘pastoral’: cornfields and rolling green hills and a giant, weathered white barn etched against an enormous blue sky, wrinkled mountains lining the eastern horizon.

This place is about as diverse as vanilla ice cream, and as sticky-sweet. When I travel through a nearby metropolis, I get harassed the moment I step off the train: ah, the anonymity of the city. It’s not that I miss being cat-called. But in the way that a survivor of abuse places herself in abusive relationships, I suppose the familiar–even the unpleasant familiar–offers some brand of comfort. I didn’t know I missed the sound of sirens til I heard one and noticed how odd it sounded.

In the winter, 936774_10201102501273563_1510282701_nI traveled back south, to revisit places and people I know, love, and miss. Already home was a place I could not access, although I was comforted by a Southern drawl, a Cajun twang, an East Texas pacing of speech. The molasses air felt like a hug. I swallowed my pride, and told the loved ones I’d abandoned that I had not found eternal happiness in committing this crime against home.

Home is eating out: Mexican or Cajun or Greek or breakfast-all-day or Italian or Indian or Turkish or Vietnamese or sushi or Jamaican or burgers or dirt-cheap, clean, enormous oysters on the half-shell served with a smile and an ice-cold glass bottle of Tecate. Home is hearing many languages, and bilingual street signs, and the good and bad of smelling everybody else’s life and toil on mass transit. Home is people smiling on the sidewalks and saying “excuse me” when you step out of their way, or “thank you” if you hold the door. It’s being asked for change.

In the spring, I reversed direction, to husband and dogs in the north, entering again a vast, coldly beautiful loneliness. “What have I done?” I thought, as I climbed into our new bed in this place. “I’ve killed ‘home’ forever.”

Home is not pretty. It is somber: concrete and steel, cars and smog, flatness and pavement. It is where a friend used the line, “hotter than a fresh-fucked fox in a forest fire,” as we mountain biked in all seasons and the temperature hit three digits in the shade before humidity factored in. But858353_10200727243412351_1337074395_o there was what I called urban scenery: railroad trestles along a bayou with a junkyard in the midground, viewed from a grassy path. Definitely a different kind of picturesque, but a memorable picture nonetheless.

In the summer, I remembered home: thick, damp, oven-like air and open, friendly faces on the street, a cacophony of smells–tortillas cooking, Indian spices, garbage, diesel fuel, body odor, stale beer–and multitude of skin tones. Memories as terribly distant as they were deeply felt. I felt tattooed by Houston, as I have been tattooed in Houston, and am tattooed with Houston’s skyline and the shape of the state of Texas. I can’t reach home, even when I’ve had the outline of it permanently inserted under my skin.

Here, the house we inhabit is imperfect, as all houses are. I have been here long enough now to mostly know which light switch does what. Knowing how to make the light shine, for eating, reading, or just dressing myself, has got to be an important step on the journey toward making a home.

It is fall again.

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Julia is a book reviewer, librarian, beer drinker, dog lover, mountain biker and native Texan now residing in Bellingham, Washington. She thinks a lot about concepts of place and home. Her favorite color is green.

 

Eternal Summer

Posted on by under Guest, Season & Place

I was born in Eternal Summer, but after college in the early 90s, I packed up and moved to the Land of Rain. Grunge on the airwaves and flannel the style, a gray sky matched our melancholy moods. We were the newest tribe of grown-ups in the decade of Smells Like Teen Spirit.

My husband and I met in Land of Rain, just after he moved here from Midwest Farmland. We fell in love, had two kids, built a house and started to make a life. Four months after we settled into the home slated to be ours forever, a career-advancing job offer convinced us to sell and move the family back to where I spent the years of my childhood and adolescence .

Eternal summer was coming! I became giddy in anticipation of sunshine every day. I missed warmth. The damp and cold had been seeping into my bones a little too deeply. When the chance came, I wanted out.

We made the move South in January and entered Eternal Summer during one of the worst rain storms in history. Was this a sign? After a few days clouds passed. My skin received the sun’s welcome like a long, lost friend. Why did I ever leave?

Shorts and flip-flops made up our wardrobes. Our daughters, ages 5 and 3, had permanent white tattoos –  the shape of  bikinis – upon their bronzed skin. Neither left the house without sunglasses or they’d pay with headaches due to squinting out the brightness. Play-dates at amusement parks came to be as common as play-dates in the neighborhood park.

Soon though, I recalled why I left Eternal Summer in the first place.

Thousands of vehicles crowded the streets of Eternal Summer, traffic keeping you hours from your destination. Strip malls and cement lined the ten-lane freeway mazes. Hazy smog prevented pure skies and the corresponding landscape on the ground was dull, save for the well-placed palm trees spaced evenly apart.

Heading to the shore became infrequent. It came to mean loading up a day’s worth of food and toys and towels and chairs, and parking a mile away only to trudge all of said belongings to hopefully land a spot on the hot sand. This lost its appeal quickly. More days were spent at the pool, but even then for a mother it was more taxing than relaxing, ensuring offspring remained safe around the chlorinated water.

One afternoon while paying for my groceries, the clerk made small talk.

     Are you from here?

     Yes and no, I replied, I grew up here, moved North, and now we’re back.

     Aren’t you totally stoked? he asked. I could never live anywhere else.

     Where else have you been?

     Nowhere, he admitted, I’ve never been north of L.A.

I left, feeling pity for this clerk. He’d never experienced living room movie nights, family huddled together on the sofa during rainy Springs.

He’d never watched the leaves explode into brilliant colors before falling off limbs.

He never experienced the joy of waking up to a winter wonderland, hearing “School is closed for the day!” and sledding down hills in the neighborhood.

He’d never felt Summer as a gift from God, where every resident must be outdoors soaking up every bit of brightness and heat mindful this time precious. Folks living in Land of Rain do not take late-June through August for granted.

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And it was then I realized: I didn’t want my daughters growing up without seasons. They needed to live through the changing sky, the re-defining landscape, the emotions of dark versus light. I feared my desire for them to grow as individual and varied as Spring, Fall, and Winter would be hindered by the surrounding messages to conform as though everything needed to be Summer all of the time.

After only two years living in Eternal Summer, we returned to Land of Rain. Sometimes, I long for warmth I once knew. I wish to rid the amount of gear in which I’m clad to simply walk the dog.

However, once the mutt and I are on the trail surrounded by evergreens, small wildlife and friendly neighbors also bundled up but not too miserable for a smile and a wave, I’m filled with gratitude of all around me. For in Spring, I see new growth. In Fall, I reflect with the changing color of the leaves. In Winter, I hibernate. But in Summer, when the sun shines in the Land of Rain, I savor the orb’s rays and am reminded not to take any blessing for granted. In seasons, I can appreciate changes life brings.

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IMG_8720 - Version 3“Eternal Summer” was written by Andee Zomerman. Andee is a teacher, minister, radio host, and writer who cannot decide what to be when she grows up. She has moved up and down the West Coast with her husband and two daughters, now making their home in Portland, OR. Andee spends her days encouraging others to volunteer in their communities via her blog, Nature of a Servant. She’s always on Facebook and tweets under @andeezomerman.

Eight-and-One-Half Signs that Spring Might Come. Someday. Maybe.

Posted on by under Season & Place

There is a is short distance between stubborn and foolish, and this morning both seem a lot closer than my office.

It is early March, and I am walking to work. A few months ago I would have prepared for this quarter-mile trek by layering my winter gear–fleece, scarf, coat, hat, gloves–but today I am convinced, thermometer-be-ignored, that spring has come. I zip up my fleece and head out the door.

Halfway down the hill my ears start to sting, and by the bottom they are mostly numb. Now I notice that the grass is white and furry, and the sidewalk shimmers with ice crystals. I shift my travel mug into the other hand as my fingers vie for their turn in my pocket.

Why didn’t I grab those gloves? They were right there; in the basket by the door.

As I trudge along, I get my answer. One after another, fellow foolish Pittsburgers pass me on the sidewalk. Very few pulled their gloves out of the basket this morning. “Stubborn under-dressed Pittsburghers,” I mutter in my head, “always a sure sign of spring.” And because I need distraction, I start a list as I shiver along the way.

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Eight-and-One-Half Signs that Spring Might Come. Someday. Maybe.

One: Stubborn under-dressed Pittsburghers. Yesterday a friend told me that on the first fifty-degree day she sends all her winter coats to the cleaners, and replaces long-sleeved shirts with t-shirts in her dresser. Nevermind that our last frost date is May 1st. Nevermind that we will certainly get more snow before winter lets us go. Nevermind all this–we have waited long enough. Pull out the swimsuits!

Two: Mud. The coming of spring is the coming of mud, and by mud I don’t mean thin, sissy mud that splashes up from puddles and leaves a thin film on your car. I mean mud with heft, mud like a sumo wrestler who grabs at your heels. With. Every. Step. Every year I forget this mud, and every year I am reminded when the first child stomps into the kitchen, thick clumps in her wake. Which brings me to…

Three: Mud boots. In my house, there is a grand exchange sometime in mid-March of snow boots for mud boots, the fruit of my thrift store labor. You see, some people call mud boots ‘rain boots’ and once or twice they pull them out so their little children can splash in puddles. Adorable. Then the little children outgrow their cute boots, and their parents stuff them into a box for the thrift store.

And at t3206364327_52f534650a_z (1)his point they come to my house to be destroyed. Our little boot-butchers go through two pair of mud boots every spring, and two pair every fall. By the time we throw out each sacrifice they are cracked, duct-taped, ripped and leaking. Additionally, they stink, because it’s oh-so-easy to slip on mud boots without socks, no matter how many times your parents scold, “Go upstairs and get some… blah, blah, blah.”

Four: Full playgrounds and lines for ice cream. My children may tune out at “socks”, but “ice cream” comes through loud and clear. So, on the first sunny afternoon, we join the hordes at the playground, and then ‘cool off’ with a sweet frozen treat. We’re not sweating–yet–but ice cream reminds us that someday we will.

Five: Potholes that turn driving into a survival sport. Or, when filled with water, could drown a small french poodle. (Note: I find this last image completely offensive. But when my husband suggested it, my seven-year old daughter rolled on the carpet with laughter and begged me to include it. This will be my final family consultation for this piece.)

15638660141_9eee7aaff4_z (1)Six: Swearing about that darn groundhog, who saw his darn shadow, increases in volume and pitch as March unwinds. Now, keep in mind that seeing his shadow (i.e. six more weeks of winter) is Punxsutawney Phil’s least optimistic forecast. Not seeing his shadow (a rare event, happening only 17 times since 1887) is his furry rodent way of predicting an early spring. Still, either way, Groundhog Day is February 2nd. This means that we should be reading books on the lawn by March 17th, at the very latest. Hey Phil–where’s my warm green grass?

Six and one-half: Swearing about the first day of spring. Okay, we get that the groundhog thing is a bit silly, and maybe March 17 is a bit optimistic. But my calendar, which was created by smart people, says that the first day of spring is March 20th. And so, when we get a blizzard on the day we were promised daffodils, we have been betrayed by both human and beast–who can deny our right to complain? (See: “It’s Going to Snow on Friday Because Spring is a Miserable Lie” from Wednesday’s New York magazine)

Seven: The thrill of the first crocuses. We may not have daffodils yet, but this weekend my entire family (and a few neighbors) gathered reverently around this sacred bunch.

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Take that, brown and white. Purple and green have returned!

And Eight: Open windows. In the fall, 50 degrees means bonfires and hoodies; in the spring, we roll down car windows and play our music for the world. Just the other day it was 60 degrees, so we aired out our house, missing the irony that our thermostat is set for 68. No matter–spring is coming, open the windows and let it in while you can.

Stir-crazy is a type of crazy, and I’m not sure I can be trusted. Soon I’ll put our glove basket away and replace it with swimming gear. Soon I’ll put away the soup pots and get out the picnic blanket. Soon I’ll trade mud boots for flip flops, or even better, bare feet. I’ve lived in Western Pennsylvania long enough to know that I should probably wait a few months for these rites of seasonal transition, but we’ll see.

It’s snowing today. Maybe I’ll wait until April.

 

Photos by Ryan Marsh and Dan Buczynski

Apples and Honey

Posted on by under Guest, Season & Place

I have never been much of a gardener, nor someone who relishes yard work and the natural rhythms of planting and harvesting. This is probably because in the first decade of my adult life I moved five times—in four different countries. Occasionally my apartments might have hosted a few pathetic geraniums, but both physically and metaphorically, those years were not ones in which I was “putting down roots.” I was a traveler and a missionary, perpetually single, and free of family demands.

Free too, of the connection, rootedness and sanity that comes with being cared for within a family day in and day out.

One particularly lonely September I was teaching in Lithuania, feeling as forlorn and shriveled as the last brown leaves clinging to northern European trees I didn’t even know the names of, when a friend brought me a bag of apples from her family’s trees. She also brought me a jar of dark-colored honey, a small portion of a gift she’d received, more than she could eat on her own.

Putzing around my kitchen that weekend, I decided to see what I could cook with apples and honey. Finding a recipe for apple-honey cake on a webpage devoted to Jewish cooking, I discovered that apples and honey are traditionally eaten during the Jewish New Year. Together, they are meant to symbolize the hope of sweetness in the coming year. My friend had unknowingly brought me apples and honey mere days before the September High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Psalm 81 is a traditional Psalm of Rosh Hashanah, during which the shofar trumpets are blown and God reminds them: “I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.” Of all the things I expected from that coming year, I could not, in the particularly grey autumn of single almost-30, have believed that an apple-honey cake held any hope for sweetness ahead. Hope was running very thin, and after many years of missionary sacrifice and relational disappointments, I suspected that when God commanded that I open wide my mouth, I would be getting bland, dutiful manna, not honey.

Nevertheless, the end of Psalm 81 promises:“He would feed you with the finest of wheat, And with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.” Where a Protestant might just see ingredients, a Jew sees promises, so I baked my cake, invited friends over to share it, and tried to muster some belief that what lay ahead would be sweet.

But it wasn’t.

The grey, both within and without, got a lot greyer, and that northern European winter was colder than it had been in decades. I learned how to wear loneliness like a tattered coat. I moved back to the States before the next school year and took the least-missional job I could find. It was a difficult, wrenching, decidedly non-sweet year.

And so was the next. The year after that, thanks to counseling, sunshine and exercise, was a little bit better.

The year after that I got married. I moved into my husband’s house in Colorado and discovered that amongst the twenty trees on our lot—mostly locust, maple and aspen—there are two apple trees. They take some serious effort to maintain. They have to be pruned and shaped, watched for fire-blight. When overripe apples fall on the lawn, they rot and kill the grass. In September we spend several weekends on ladders, shoveling the bounty of apples into box after box, giving them away to friends, coworkers, neighbors, and whoever will take some of the abundance off our hands.

Each year, I’ve made the apple-honey cake again, in an old yellow Bundt pan. I grease the pan liberally so the sticky batter of apples, spices, honey and brewed coffee will come out clean and brown. Last weekend, I pulled one of the gallon-sized Ziplocs of sliced apples from my freezer and made the cake to take to friends who just had their second baby. As we ate it together, our son and their daughter chased each other around the kitchen.

I don’t quite know when I first felt these new roots taking hold. My personal story could have just as easily continued to be one of perpetual motion, but somehow instead, I’m living in the suburbs, learning how to care for fruit trees. Instead of feeling like a single, severed branch, I live in a rhythm of seasons. There is honey and sweetness. But I know it is, as the Psalm says, honey from a rock, sweetness that has been wrung from hardness. And sweeter for it.

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J Fueston Photo 2“Apples and Honey” was written by Jennifer Stewart Fueston. Jennifer writes in Longmont, Colorado where she lives with her husband and young son. She has taught writing at the University of Colorado, Boulder, as well as internationally in Hungary, Turkey, and Lithuania. She recently published a chapbook of poetry, Visitations, with Finishing Line Press. She blogs very sporadically at jenniferstewartfueston.com and has just realized she uses Twitter (@jenniferfueston) primarily during playoff football.

Chicago was spring, Philadelphia Autumn

Posted on by under Guest, Season & Place

I am sitting in a guest room that was once my room at my parents’ home. I’m typing away with my feet propped up on a box and my computer on top of an antique vanity that belonged to my great-grandmother. The years have cycled back, the way they do, to the first season. The room is mine again.

The red Georgia clay and the bare winter limbs on the oaks outside are part of the season that birthed me 32 years ago. I joke with my parents that I am the poster-child for the boomerang generation. Three cross-continent moves, a graduate degree, and a couple “adult” jobs under my belt, but here I am typing away at a vanity where I can see my name that I etched into the wood as a kid.

On my first cross-country move I landed just north of Chicago, a ten-minute walk from the shore of Lake Michigan. It was a land of straight and flat roads, crossing at hard-right angles until you got to the shore where sand and rocks met vast water. I had a spot near the lake—a tree arched over the edge of the water and every season I marveled at the changes there. I once waded waist-high in snow drifts to get close to the icy lake. I watched in awe as the weather changed from week to week. For the first time in my life I knew what it was like to ache for the coming of spring, to see the green shoots of grass start growing as the slushy, dirty snow finally melted.

In Chicago, the beauty of the Lake and the beauty of the architecture fed my soul in tandem. Chicago introduced me to myself in a way that’s only possible when you flourish somewhere brand new. As a suburban girl, I barely knew my neighbors, but here I passed them on the sidewalk regularly as we all walked to the train or the coffee shop or church.

When spring came, we all went outside. The two elementary school children across the street played football with their dad in the front yard, Henry the beagle and his caretaker made frequent trips around the block; I chatted with the next door neighbor about plants as I edged my lawn right next to her driveway. There was an annual block party and an Easter-egg hunt. My introverted self means I can’t tell you the names of many of these people, but I was drawn to the community and togetherness–these seeds of community burrowed into my heart.

And when the season in Chicago was done, I landed in the hills and valleys of Eastern Pennsylvania to attend seminary. Here, I would check the weather for rain and plan my life accordingly. When it rained the basement flooded and blocked my path to the washing machine for a day. The roads flooded in such a way that my old car protested and sputtered over every puddle.

But on pretty days I’d sometimes find myself on a hill in the beautiful Valley Forge National Park, textbook and pen in hand as I did my reading for my seminary coursework. During those years the theology I studied and learned began to stitch together the pieces of my life. I was desperate to know if I was changing, or just growing. Had my years as an educator and a non-profit worker,  my experiences as a single woman and a fat woman, my understanding of God learned in a suburban Southern church and an urban Midwestern church  finally all come together to produce who I was?

That last year in Pennsylvania was a bountiful harvest. I had seen the beauty of community while watching my Chicago neighborhood, I got to live it in Pennsylvania where every Sunday night neighbors gathered together for dinner. Relationships were deep and meaningful. Ideas and hopes and dreams were always close at hand. After a lifetime of not knowing what I was passionate about, I finally had answers (to some things!). There were places where I could voice a firm “yes” or “no.”

Those passions and ideas unexpectedly led me back to Georgia, a move not for work or grad school, but a choice to be near family. There is a lot that is uncertain for me about life back in Georgia. While I found a worthwhile reason to move, one that was born out of the community I experienced with people who had been strangers,  my current situation lacks the structure to define my day’s activities. There is a freedom to find what will shape my life here. It is planting season: time to sow the seeds I reaped from a Pennsylvania harvest, first nourished in a Chicago spring.

The dark wood of this old vanity and the even-older red clay outside remind me that there are roots already here. This very specific plot has nurtured my beginnings before. A harvest will come again.  Now, counting on the hope of spring and the bounty of autumn, I sow.

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fall“Chicago was Spring, Philadelphia Autumn” was written by Nicole Morgan. Nicole has lived near Chicago, IL; Philadelphia, PA; and in a handful of lesser known Georgian towns. She loves discovering, and falling in love with, the parts of these communities that make them unique. She currently lives in her childhood home near Atlanta, GA, writes about bodies, theology, and community at jnicolemorgan.com  and tweets away @jnicolemorgan

 

My Bad L’Attitude

Posted on by under Season & Place

We stand and shiver in the northern latitudes of a tilted planet. It is February in Pennsylvania, and we are huddled as close together as is decent and comfortable for adult acquaintances. The wind whips over us, then through us, finding every uncovered inch of skin. “Where are they, now?” someone asks, “Do they bring ‘em out a minute later for every degree the temperature drops?” I nod mutely and smirk with my mouth closed, commiserating but not willing to expose my teeth to this wind. Together we stare intently at the school doors, waiting to walk our children home.

When the kids come, we push up and out of our shells, greeting our children after eight hours apart. The kids are, predictably, half-zipped, with gloves in their coat pockets and scarves trailing behind. The younger ones hone in on icicles hanging from the iron fence and break them off quickly, trying to suck the cool liquid before their grown-ups scold, “Put that down! That’s dirty! And put your gloves on!”

No matter. They are off, like puppies in snow, and now we break our huddle. “See ya tomorrow.” “Have a good night.” “Stay warm.” We are trying to stay warm, but our kids are far ahead, so we trade our protective shuffle for purposeful strides and call out, “Wait up!”

Don’t they know how cold it is out here? It seems not, and even I forget-for a moment or two-when I finally catch up with my daughter. She veers off the cleared sidewalk for the icy crust of snow. Crunch. Crunch. She finds a pile of salt and stomps her pink boots into it. “Listen, Mama!” she exclaims, “It sounds like Pop Rocks when they’re popping in your mouth!”

She’s right. I find my own pile and grind it under my heel. Crunch. Pop. Who knew?

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As any good third-grade science textbook can tell you, the earth’s relationship to the sun has two aspects. One, we spin on an axis, making one rotation every 24 hours, and this is why Pennsylvanians are just waking up when the Brits are having their midday meal. Spinning on an axis creates time zones and jet lag, romantic sunsets and the possibility of standard clocks.

However, we do more than spin. We move, in a great not-quite-circular orbit around the sun that drags us (by gravity, apparently) 584 million miles every 365.256 days. And all this motion plus the fact that we’re tilted in space (at a 23.4 degree angle, if you were wondering) means we open up a can of worms called “The Four Seasons.”

Third-graders understand this much better than you do because some enthusiastic science teacher just showed them what this looks like with a lamp and a Styrofoam ball. The students sat in a big circle, and the teacher stuck a lamp in the middle. “Imagine that this is the sun, in the middle, like the hub of a bicycle wheel.” Then she stuck a chopstick into the earth, tilted it, and began spinning the ball while walking around the lamp. If she was really good, she may have even taken out a sharpie and marked the students’ current Styrofoam location. “Here. This black dot is Pennsylvania. Watch it as I walk around the circle, and tell me when we are having winter and summer.”

In other words: Life as a black dot on a spinning, tilted, orbiting planet is a seasonal event, most especially for those on the top and bottom of the ball. And the current show for the Northern Hemisphere, running sometime through late March, is called winter.12350251755_e4b73a3fa5_z

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Inspired by my kids’ enthusiasm, I try to not have a grass-is-always-greener attitude about summer in the middle of winter (though it is), but my longing for warm months persists.

This morning I went running, buried in layers of fleece and synthetic wicking material, and passed the spot where we set up lawn chairs for an outdoor jazz concert last August. As I avoided the icy patches, I remembered face-painting, warm grass, and finding a spot in the shade. The outside world is just so darn hospitable in the summertime, as if you trade ceilings for sky and living rooms for lawns.

“Appreciate today,” I chided myself, trying to enjoy the brisk air as it burned my lungs. I tried to recall the discomforts of running in the summer, of over-heating and being forced to run in the early morning. As I pulled down my hat to cover my stinging ears, I tried to remember the longing for air-conditioning, hot car seats that stick to the back of your thighs, and the high-pitched drone of mosquitoes, closing in. Life was not all roses when my little black dot leaned in to the sun.

Still, as I took in the familiar outlines of a world that once was green, I felt homesick for a place that was under my feet, and realized that distance can be measured in months as well as miles. The salt crunched as I ran and I thought it like a hopeful mantra, “Pop rocks, pop rocks, pop rocks.” It didn’t do much good.

Later, when I stopped running, I took a few photos. And as I walked and looked at the way the snow dimpled, some spark sidled up to my homesickness and burned there. In that moment I did not come to love winter, but maybe my perception just became a bit more nuanced–instead of bitter and frigid, I saw quiet and clean.

It was time to go back inside. Carefully placing each step, so as not to slip, I noticed footprints pressed into the crunchy snow.  Their icy edges gleamed in the sunlight; I took another picture. “Maybe I will remember these,” I thought, “when I sit and sweat on the lawn.” Maybe.

We’ll see. Sometimes, when you live on a whirling, tilted planet, you just have to hold on for the ride.

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Photo from space by NASA; Photos of playground not by NASA