As I write this, I am sitting by our beautiful harbor on a January morning watching sea birds skim across the surface of the 40-degree water. They seem content continuing their daily rituals regardless of the temperature. A temporary easing last week of the stretch of frigid air didn’t last but it gifted me a sense of contentment, too. Winter is not so bad!
Check in with me in a month or so to see how durable this feeling is, but once again, I’m in no rush for winter to pass. The “embrace” rather than “endure” approach to the least favorite season for most of us has been growing steadily in the past few years. Is that simply coincident with my overall sense of contentment with the new stage of later life?
Possibly.
There comes a point where we “accept the things we cannot change” as the Serenity prayer urges and the gray and cold of December through March isn’t ever going to be green and balmy just because I want it to be.
“I used to wish winter away and couldn’t wait for it to be over,” author Dr. Stephanie Fitzgerald writes. “And then one year I just stopped and took some time to sit with winter, be with winter, and I thought, ‘Oh, that’s what I’ve been missing.’”
Her book, “The Gifts of Winter,” joins the oeuvre of writers like Katherine May, whose famed “Wintering” not only coined a term but a way of thinking when it comes to this season of the year as well as seasons of life.
So what was I missing all those years of wishing winter away?
First, the revelation of a lesser landscape. My friend came over for tea (more on that great interlude in a minute) and glanced out my back picture window. “Oh, it looks so different with the trees bare,” she exclaimed. The visual seclusion enabled by my backyard greenery was not just diminished in winter, it was transmuted. Think ornate wedding ring versus simple gold band. For years the reductive gray bothered me. Now I see the beauty in the simplicity. A bird perched in the bare birch focuses me on its tenacious grip as the branch sways. The pumpkin I’d left in the empty vegetable garden bed is more than half eaten but the little bit of orange shell remaining is more vivid against the brown dirt than it would be in the lush of summer. I can see the houses
behind us but also layers of afternoon sky beyond my typical field of vision. Ah, and the smoke emitting from neighbors’ chimneys? A reminder that we are in this together.
Loneliness this time of year is a real thing. Holiday events are behind us, and overall, we’re less social. The effort of dressing and getting into a cold car and driving to see someone seems like a lot to undertake. Make the effort. That’s what I am telling myself anyway. The author Fitzgerald concurs and adds: “Embrace variety. If we have different points of connection in the diary, see different people, have different conversations, then that variety offers a sense of time that isn’t just a seamless blur.” So don’t just meet someone for tea at Mookie’s each week — visit a shop together, go to a talk at the library, join an exercise class at the community center. But, also, do have that tea!
I was never a big tea-in-the-afternoon person — more of a let’s grab a glass of wine-in-the-evening kind of person. But I’ve been missing out. Tea is the epitome of cozy. And cozy is the antidote to winter blues. Invite a friend for tea, and speaking of variety, take the opportunity to be introduced to a tea you’ve never tried. I had Ahmad’s Blackcurrant Burst at a friend’s this winter and if joy had a flavor, this would be it.
The “get outside, take a walk and enjoy the crisp air” advice is timeless and I swear I’ll follow it more regularly one day. In the meantime, on some sunny mornings, I have been sitting in the rocking chair on the front porch, albeit wearing a winter hat and gloves. A walker-by exclaimed upon seeing me, “I love that you are sitting out here in winter.”
Her attitude, like mine, won’t change the weather, but boy does it make me feel warm inside.
