Tag Archives: winter

Three Years as “Mom”

Posted on by under Finding Place

If you’ve never picked up your life and moved hundreds of miles away to a place where you know no one, I highly recommend it.

At 26, I was burnt-out on teaching after only three years, uncertain of what my future looked like, and my always-dreaming-of-new-places heart was ready to take a leap.  I got on the computer. After a few hours on google, I applied for three jobs, got an interview for one, and within a few months  had whittled the contents of my apartment down into what would fit into a small SUV– rented, one-way, from Atlanta to Chicago.

I moved into a 125 year old house that came with the job, a short walk from the shores of Lake Michigan.  Already living in the house were three other adults and eight teenagers. The easiest way to explain my new job is that I worked for a nonprofit boarding school. I was one of four “house moms” to a group of smart, dedicated, and brave young women who made the choice as 7th, 8th, or 9th graders to live mostly away from their families in order to make their education a priority.  In many ways, the people in that house lived as a family.

My favorite parts of the job were easily things like waking up  a little earlier on cold mornings so the kids had cups of tea or hot chocolate to take with them to the school. I would often stand just inside the front door and say good-bye, shivering against the cold Chicago wind, as they walked out the door with smiles on their faces and gloved-hands clutching mugs. The highlight of the day was almost always dinner. At least four nights a week we gathered around the extra long dining room table and there was a chorus of “please pass the . . .” as dinner plates were filled and then stories from the day began.

Our dining room table, set for a Christmas Party.

Our dining room table, set for a Christmas Party.

One late spring day one of “my” kids came home to say that she needed to take fruit to a school function the next week. The morning of the event I pulled out a fruit platter with oranges and kiwi and grapes and strawberries arranged in an alternating, symmetrical color pattern. She looked at the tray and then back at me and said, “Did you buy this?”

“No. I made it last night.”

“Wow. It’s so pretty! Thank you!”

When I was a kid, the thing that I most wanted was to be a mom. There were a few years in college where my life seemed to  moving towards my dream of  “get married young and start a family.” While that didn’t happen, my desire to be a mom remained. But there, with fruit tray in hand, I realized something.  It was a simple moment in the midst of a life that included dishes and laundry and “turn down that music” and checking on homework and a million things that were very mom-like, but it was that moment when I knew that I had found my place. Somehow, my always-wanted-to-be-a-mom heart was getting to live its dreams.

At the beginning of November I was back in Chicago for a few short days as part of a work trip. I drove past the old house and paused for just a few moments, giving thanks for what I learned those three years and have continued to live out since: I am a person who wants to make spaces safe and welcoming. That is a passion and a desire that can be lived out no matter if anyone calls me “mom” or not.

***

Nicole bio YAH

Stuck, Unstuck

Posted on by under Travel & Place

It was January—that moment when, in Michigan, you are still descending into the depths of winter. (Never mind that the days are getting longer, lighter.)

I was continuing to descend, too. My descent was more deceptive than winter’s—a postpartum swirl of hormones and emotions that could just as easily trick me into believing I was rising as falling. There were moments of brilliant sunshine on fresh blankets of snow, joyful baby squeals, and the sense that I had never quite been whole without this little one in my arms. In those moments I felt buoyed. Was the falling sensation I felt actually a rising—a trick of the mind?

No, that wasn’t the case. At least not in any comprehensive, lasting way.

It’s hard to say what exactly triggered me to finally shut down that January day—to batten the hatches, boarding up windows and barricading with sandbags as if to protect myself against a storm I had been watching move toward me. Now I know this about depression: the “what” or “why” hardly matters. It’s not as if identifying “what” means it could all be easily “fixed.” It just was what it was—a mix of chemicals and hormones, disappointments and anxieties, fear and regret, converging and swirling. And suddenly that day, that moment, I couldn’t keep up the charade that had kept me inching forward on previous days.

I could only sit, blankly. Sometimes with quiet tears forging new paths down my cheeks.

Finally, while my baby napped, I called my mom. I couldn’t speak, of course—couldn’t begin to explain a thing about what was happening inside me. But she still heard me, like mothers do. She heard the tears from 70 miles away, where she sat in my childhood home, and she knew I was stuck; she knew I needed to move.

“I’m coming to get you,” she said matter-of-factly, not asking or suggesting, only stating the fact in a way that allowed me to breathe a bit deeper.

So I sat as she drove to me through the frozen world. I don’t remember her arriving at my house, or helping me pack a few bags, transferring the baby’s carseat from my car to hers. I only remember the drive home—to the place I still considered home. I was, after all, only a decade removed from the time I had last lived there, the summer I was 19.

291654079_bc3cf3ce06_bMy mom had dark chocolate in her car, and as we traveled she told me to eat as much as I wanted—that it was good for me. She didn’t ask me to explain anything, didn’t ply me with questions or ask what I wanted or needed. She simply directed and gave, taking the wheel both literally and figuratively as she moved me from point A to point B.

As we traveled I felt the panic and confusion within me dislodge and begin to move downstream. I cracked open the shutters on my mind and began to take in where I was: The warmth of the car and bitter-sweetness of the chocolate. The beauty of the snow stretching out from either side of the two-lane highway—the way it was whimsical decorating the evergreens, and then sophisticated blanketing the ground, seeming to change color as it rose on hills and dipped into valleys, the late afternoon sun slanting onto its smooth surfaces.

I took in the one-stoplight towns in a way I never had before, even though I’d passed through them dozens of times behind the wheel of my own car. There were people on the sidewalks, bundled against the cold: a mother walking slowly as her snowsuited toddler kicked his boots through the snow; a group of three teenage girls who seemed to meander and stall, in spite of the cold.

The towns were then behind us, the speed limit rose, and I saw the sad, sinking homes down along the river, a man getting out of his rusted truck, pulled up alongside a satellite dish. Closer to home, the terrain flattened, presenting farm houses and sleeping winter fields. There was nothing remarkable along that stretch of road—no one, I imagine, living remarkable lives. There were just lives, and I noticed them as my mother carried me along.

Toward the end of our journey she told me a story about when she was a young mom—not to say “I know exactly how you feel,” but just, I suppose, to broaden my perspective and help me see beyond the walls of my confining mind, just as putting me in the car helped me to see beyond the walls of my house, my life, which had become too small.

What my mother knew, what she taught me, is that becoming “unstuck” involves some form of moving, traveling, even if you don’t know exactly where you need to go.

 

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.

IMG_9008

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.

* * * * *

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.

* * * * *

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.

IMG_0124

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.

*  *  *  *  *

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.

On the threshold

Posted on by under Season & Place

I was born on the threshold of spring—at that moment when winter could just as easily dig in her heels as bow graciously and take her leave.

Over the years, the second day of March has skipped, tip-toed, sloshed, or trudged onto the scene of my life, accompanied by a wide variety of backdrops. Some years, the snow completely melts by then, inviting me to joyfully lace up new sneakers in place of clunky boots, and to take my coffee out to the porch.

I remember one spring-like childhood birthday in particular, because it was nice enough outside to go for a spin on my new birthday bike—a yellow banana seat Huffy with orange and white accents, called “Texas Rose” (bikes came with names back then, written in a suitable font across the chain guard). I still remember the clichéd-but-very-real freedom I felt as I pushed hard on the pedals to pick up speed, the wind lifting my bangs off my forehead and the handlebar streamers blowing back, tickling my arms. Even the puddles, spraying a mist of grimey specks onto my pants, were a joy to whiz through: The sound of bike tires cutting through puddles was the music of spring. Back in our driveway I engaged the kickstand, my Michigan winter legs trembling in response to the sudden demand placed on spring-and-summer muscles.

photo (8)Other years (like this year, for instance), heaps of snow have cruelly set my birthday scene. By early March everyone, of course, is longing for spring, but I tend to take its coy absence personally. I would gladly exchange all my birthday presents for an early departure of winter—for a walk on non-treacherous sidewalks in the sunshine, hat- and mitten-free, with the first signs of daffodils poking up through dead leaves. What could be a better gift than a promise that temperatures won’t fall below 50 again until fall?

unnamed-2Instead, the likely reality in early March is something in between—neither here nor there, winter nor spring. In March you can often find me walking on the north side of the street, where the longer days of south-sweeping sunshine have melted the snow into slushy puddles and coaxed snowdrops, aconites, and crocuses out of hiding.

Soggy grass and brave flowers on one side of the street, dirty piles of snow and icy sidewalks on the other; I walk through March balanced in an awareness of what has been and what is to come.

*   *   *   *   *

As if taking a cue from the month of my birth, I tend to live my life at the intersection of realism and optimism—with an acute awareness of what is, but also a vivid understanding of what could be. The truth of the matter, as well as the hope. The now and the not yet. The lion and the lamb.

I grudgingly see the dirty piles of snow for what they are, but I know they’ll eventually become water to nourish flowers and lush green grass. The messy pile of boots by my front door, and the puddles and salt deposits they leave on the wood floor, will undoubtedly be replaced by sneakers and flip-flops, grass clippings and leaves.

unnamed-3And the weight I feel—whether from so many layers of clothing and gear, or from built-up deposits of worries and regrets—will melt away, just as surely as the clouds will disperse and warmer streams of air will travel my direction, crowding out the chill. Suddenly, one bright morning, I will be able to see again who I am under all those layers of down and wool, and wondering and longing. I will see that I am a new creation, in process, again and again.

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?

****

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

****

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.

 IMG_0066IMG_0062IMG_0061

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