Hello winter
Posted on | November 23, 2007 | 11 Comments
I’ve blinked and it’s winter; the lush carpet of crumpled brown and yellow leaves is obscured by downy blanket of white. I sit at the kitchen counter, my back to the wood stove, watching snowflakes drift to the ground. My mind slips into a reverie, tracing the twirling track of individual snowflakes as they fall; the view straight from a Courier & Ives postcard. I take a deep breath. Hello winter.
It would be a lie to say that I’ve been looking forward to winter. I love the snow, and the first flakes falling every year make me giddy, and certainly I am eager to haul out the sleds and the snow shovels. It also helps that this winter I have toasty warm Sorrels to keep my feet snug, and a new powder blue down jacket. But winter brought out the sharpest edges last year, and it’s a bit like getting back on the horse after being bucked off to return to these cold months where the sun barely slips between the cloud cover for a few short hours, and in the night the mercury slips below zero. It was this time last year that my relationship with DH felt like it was imploding, as it underwent the fierce growth of a relationship moving past the seven year mark.
In my writing I’ve begun to explore how dialogue always overlaps. How really, there are only a small handful of moments (if any) when two people talk and both of them are actually talking about the same thing. Last winter, we were a caricature of this, aching to be close to each other yet sparring endlessly, our words the serrated objects of separate agendas. I still can’t put a finger on the pulse of the pain we caused each other: what it was for, or why. Most of it was reactionary; the product of external stresses from work and life that became distilled into the small orbit of our love, but it was also the product of a hundred small things: a cold house, anxiety over dreams unrealized, a toddler with insistent needs and disrupted sleep, and an accumulated lack of time to ourselves.
So the trepidation is there, if only faintly perceptible when I stop to take my own pulse. A slight blip. A snag in the fabric of these early winter days with snow falling and warm firelight and laughter. Every small argument bears undue weight, even though I know we’re so far from there, our love like maple sap grown dark and sweet in the heat metal evaporator pan.
It’s strange how the seasons bring things up. How certain days recall others; and for the longest time I’ve hated November. In college, and for years after, I’d get stir crazy. I’d try to break up with my boyfriend, or move to a new state, or write reams of dismal poems. It makes sense in that context, that last November marked the beginning of a season of angst, and it thrills me to no end to realize that I’ve actually this year I’ve bucked the trend. November was full of yellow leaves, a filigree of frost, and page after page of prose written with more confidence than I’ve ever had with a purpose and a deadline driving each paragraph towards completion. It’s all about climbing back on the horse, and then asking it to be Pegasus, and expecting to fly.
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November 24th, 2007 @ 12:57 am
pure poetry. your writing is achingly beautiful. love reading your blog.
November 24th, 2007 @ 1:41 am
The seasons to this to me to. “To everything a season…” But, knowing what winter was last year to you is key. It can help you change that horse into Pegasus.
November 24th, 2007 @ 6:34 am
Chills, that’s what you give me. Pegasus! how I do love your writing.
November 24th, 2007 @ 8:25 am
i can’t wait to read a book that you have written. i say this every time that i comment, but wow. glorious words and so striking and true. really making me think, but then also the words making me want to read it just to hear the way it sounds.
wow, again. thank you.
November 24th, 2007 @ 3:11 pm
i love this last line – you always write so beautifully, C x
November 25th, 2007 @ 3:21 am
Your writing is so real and beautiful. I don’t know if it’s relevant, but I watched the movie Noel today and just realized that these times of conflict sometimes happen so that we can get to be angels of mercy. Sometimes we are the ones in need of forgiveness, and sometimes we are the one who gets to give the gift of forgiveness or understanding. Hope this winter is one of miracles for you.
November 25th, 2007 @ 8:27 am
Christina, you don’t know me, but I’m a fan. I come here every day because the writing is rich and meaningful. You are an incredible writer – not just the lyrical words and the way you put them together, but there’s depth and substance to your writing. You have something to say. Keep writing, girl, ’cause you have a voice the world needs to hear.
Sometimes it’s hard to separate a line, because the lines are strongest as a whole – but I loved these in particular…
“But winter brought out the sharpest edges last year, and it’s a bit like getting back on the horse after being bucked off to return to these cold months…”
“…our words the serrated objects of separate agendas.”
“A snag in the fabric of these early winter days…”
“It’s all about climbing back on the horse, and then asking it to be Pegasus, and expecting to fly.”
November 25th, 2007 @ 10:16 am
That last line, for lack of a better term, is “money”. Just beautiful, all of it, as always – one of my favorite writers, you are.
Thank you for sharing your honest trepidation. Winter is always hard – even for me, here, in this land of almost no-real winter, only grey skies and lackluster drizzle. The darkness presses in, and all I’m afraid of seems too real. I have to remember to take big breaths, to breathe in hope instead of fear.
I really think your realization of everything that piled up last winter…will help, this time around. It was one layer of all your relationship is and will be – and all things are made new, in time.
November 25th, 2007 @ 2:33 pm
it has been months since i last read one of your posts. don’t ask me why i stayed away, i don’t know.
i am glad that i stumbled upon your words again when i did. that last line is simply beautiful.
November 26th, 2007 @ 10:08 am
Do you remember what you went through right before last winter? You just started back to work after having a year with your Bean, AND you two (3) just finished renovating that house, moving in, decorating, etc. You were coming off of a very stressful time, and starting a new part of your life. It will be different this year.
December 3rd, 2007 @ 10:44 am
Your words move me. Thank you for posting. Love reading your blog…