Season of My Discontent
Author photo.
I don’t hate winter quite as much as it may seem from my frequent statements and outbursts; that is to say, my hatred of winter is not absolute. My instinct remains, and always will, to argue vociferously against its proponents - who, of course, comprise the vast majority of the people who surround me each day. Privately, however, I will at times concede that winter has its virtues.
It is beautiful. It may not be the kind of beauty I want to touch or to be inside of or a part of, but it is beauty that I can (secretly) appreciate through the windows of my house or my car. I may rail and curse against the inconveniences of snowfall, but even at my grinchiest I can’t deny that the painted-on white tracings along each individual tree branch are spectacular. I resent the fact that the sun can look bright and yet, when I step into it, I feel nothing - as though it were broken - and yet I am (secretly) filled with the most childlike delight whenever the bright winter sun, set in that cool blue sky, makes white snow sparkle all those cool ephemeral colors.
Ice storms are the worst, right (I say as we potentially face one this weekend)? But have you seen what it looks like, what everything looks like, the day after an ice storm? It almost makes it worth it. (Almost, not quite.)
I can’t stand the shortness of the days, but there is some small, rotten part of me that still wants there to be a season of darkness, of restriction. The vast majority of me would be perfectly content to maintain the robust social life of the warmer months, with its frequent gatherings and festivities and later nights and looser sense of time’s limitations, but there’s just this little tiny sliver that appreciates the break. I try my best to adhere to my policy of never going outside when it’s below 40 degrees, but there’s exceptions. I go out to shovel after a storm like everybody else. Once or twice a year each year I might go out for a walk or even an hour or two sledding with the children. All these things I endure, and maybe even secretly enjoy a little, and when I am done I quite shamefully feel refreshed from the cold, fresh air, with a dirty sense of gladness that, if only for a moment, I truly lived outside in the season of my discontent.
More than once since the winter solstice, I’ve even intentionally gone outside at night, with an organized group of people, with the intent of looking at the stars; the fact that the drier air makes for clearer skies and better stargazing, not to mention the ever-watchful gaze of Orion towering overhead, is perhaps the winter’s greatest virtue, or at least the one I’m most likely to admit to in public. My motivation for doing this is not primarily the quality of the skies, however, so much as a commitment to ritual observance of our movement throughout the wheel of the year, a commitment I’m determined to maintain as stronger than my distaste for being out in the cold and the dark. On this score, it actually is worth it - what better way to mark our passage through time and space than a good and intentional look at the stars every few weeks or so? Especially one with other people.
I’m not even ashamed to say that I’m glad to have done those things.
All that said, the reasons for my distaste and resistance are also not without merit. When we arrive at this present moment in the calendar - February 1, Imbolc, St. Brigid’s Day, Groundhog Day, Candlemas, Lunar New Year, whichever flavor you prefer - my commitment to observance and celebration and appreciation competes not just with the cold and the dark but with the cumulative effects of these things and what they’ve done to me. My skin is pale and cracked and itchy and unhappy. I’m irrationally sluggish and even tired, less able than at any other time in the year to get things done even when I have the will to do so. I want to hang out with people all the time, but plans fall through so much easier. There’s sicknesses and more storms and everyone else - even the winter-lovers - are fatigued and cranky, too.
When I see posts, even from the winter-lovers, celebrating this time, St. Brigid’s season, as the moment when spring gains victory over winter, even if we don’t know it yet, I gain some solace from the fact that they’re right, but the snow has numbed considerably my ability to feel the joy inherent in such a statement. I’m too beat to summon up any cheers.
But I’ll try, and I’ll be glad I did - though I’ll be gladder when spring has the kind of victory that we can feel, the kind that lasts, at least until next winter.
