One of my best friends who has lived regrettably too far away for a few years now continues to urge that despite some of the challenges of relocating, all that beautiful sun shine she's been so greedily soaking up is worth it.
I remember a lot of heart ache in my life that runs across the board. Love, family, work and health problems alike. I remember the devastation of each challenge that has entered in my life. What I cannot remember is the sun ever being present during these terrible, no good, very bad days. It seems that I have just become aware of there always being this grey ominous look about the sky whenever I was struggling through the worst of my desolation. I mean, in all reality it could be that my mood and my recollection of the experience causes me to see the back drop of these dramas as gray and overcast--typical New England winter weather. But nope, I stand by it. It has always, always been shitty out when I was feeling shitty.
The winters here are too long. It's like life gets put on hold once the temperature drops. Frankly, I could even put up with the cold if it weren't for that gray, disheartening, miserable excuse for a sky that hangs above us, heavy with gloom and weighted with the threat of cold showers and slushy brown snow to ruin our daily lives. It's beautiful in the fall, when the leaves are changing and there is a cool crisp wind that makes your cheeks a sweet rosy tint and your hair impossibly glossy and cooperative. But before you can even say "Your hair looks great!" comes that unbearable cold, miserable, rain that somehow, as if not evil enough on its own, turns to snow. And it lingers. Until May.
I used to be a winter lover. I used to wait with baited breath for that first snow fall and even before that the distinct smell of season change. Wet leaves on the ground, gray sky when I woke up for school heavy cable knit sweaters with too-long sleeves and cozy hoods..ahh my paradise.
But some time in the last several years my pleasure has turned to panic. I clung to the warm weather like a woman desperate for the years of her youth. I refused to swap my adorable sandals and open toed heels for sneakers and boots. I wore tights with my sun dresses to keep them from collecting moths in my closet. I am ever more begrudging to this weather.
We've all had loves that impacted our lives and in more ways than we are aware. Did you ever notice that some times your favorite song on the radio was one that was introduced to you by a lover? Or maybe a restaurant that you casually invite friends to was in fact where you had a promising first date long ago. Our senses so heightened when we are in love it must affect how we remember. I say this because when there was a time in my life that winter was magical it was because I had fallen in love on the night of the first snow. It was December 8th and a couple Thousand Years, I was headstrong, strong willed and nobody could tell me what to do or who not to be with. I walked for hours in winter night air to be close to a boy for his warmth. Maybe because I was so young, the cold didn't feel invasive it felt invigorating.
Well, that was a lifetime and a half ago. But I most fondly, and most recently, recall falling in love in the summer. The muggy weather doing wonders for my curls, giving them a dewy glow. I wore summer dresses and shirts and danced until my skin was wet to the touch. I laughed and walked so carefree among friends wishing the night would never end. I was free to let my shoulders relax and enjoy the night sky without my breath getting in the way of the view. I felt warmth for myself for the first time and didn't need it to radiate from anyone else, thank you very much! But I fell in love anyway. With enough comfort to be by myself and be my own glowing, dancing, self and enough desire to let someone press their heated skin up against mine and let our minds meld together and imagine what a lifetime of summers with each other would be like. I crave that heat day in and day out. I wake up and wait for the sun to shine just a little earlier, even if it means giving up that much needed hour of sleep. Such a fulfilling time in life, summer. Now if I could just find a way to live in that eternal summer land, with a strong willed, head strong man who loves New England and it's "seasons" so much. I say New England has only two seasons: Winter and a brief and fleeting thing called summer.
Maybe I'll have the chance in one of these lifetimes to live in such a place. It can't come soon enough. My skin is calling to be tanned and kissed by summer air. My hair wants to be wild and curly! I want to swim in the ocean and not just one time before the air cools the ocean just a few degrees too cold. No, I want to swim every day! I want my babies to play outside and have a real thirst for life, not grow indoors in this time-out we call Winter.
I will always be driven in my lifetime, sometimes it has been for the wrong things and sometimes I was dead on. But I know that I will never be able to surrender my hope and desire to live closer to the sun.
Monday, October 19, 2009
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