This post is available as a podcast here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/s-p01/episodes/Winter-Snow-e2djsme

Seasons are new to me. There’s a quiet to a cold, snowy night. My body and mind do not like this “winter.” The quiet upsets my mind, and the cold upsets my body. Winter makes me uneasy, and sometimes it makes me a bit cranky. I never planned to live anywhere with snow because I do not like the cold. I ended up living in a place with snow by chance. As an academic, I went where the best job was. For a lot of academics, we go wherever there is a job. So, there isn’t much choice in location.

Winter is hard for a lot of us, it isn’t just the snow. It’s the holidays, the darkness, a new year – changes. It’s been said so much it’s a cliché, but the holidays are hard for many people. At a time when we’re more distant from family members, and further distanced socially, a time when families are supposed to come together can cause immense stress emotionally, mentally, and financially. SAD is a thing, I think we all feel it to one degree or another, whether we admit it to ourselves or not. The sun gives us life, even if you like hiding in a cave. The end of one year and the start of a new one is a time of reflection and decisions. Both can be incredibly painful. Winter is hard for me.

My family is small. Smaller after I stopped talking to my dad. Even smaller after most of my grandparents passed. Holidays are intimate gatherings of only a few these days. I spent my last Thanksgiving alone, with RSV. I spent Christmas season with my mom, stepdad, and child. We got stuck inside due to weather. It’s nice to see family, but winter is still dreary. The thing I miss most about my second marriage was my ex husband’s family. He had a huge extended family. Something I hadn’t realized I’d always wanted until I had it. I want more children, and I hope that someday I can give them that kind of family, even if it’s only through my chosen family – my friends.

I am powered by sunshine, even though I cannot sit in the sun. Like, I’m the dork wearing a floppy hat, giant sunglasses, a sunshirt, and a bunch of sunscreen. If you see me in summer, outside, I look like I’m in disguise or something. The sun hurts, but without the light, I’m depressed. I rise with the sun, and I go to bed with it. It’s winter right now, so I go to bed around 8pm-ish and get up around 6:30am. In summer, I go to bed around 10pm and get up around 4am. Why? Sunlight. I seriously start going to bed when the sun sets and get up when it rises. Year-round. I don’t like sleeping more than 8 hours, so in Winter I end up shutting down a lot. In Summer, I feel like I don’t even need sleep – I’m just happy. I want to live near the equator. Please? Sunshine, warm weather, and humidity? I’m down.

By now, if you’ve read my blogs, you know I spend a lot of time in reflection and introspection. I’ve done it all my life. So, at the year’s end, it’s a bit like getting hit with a reflection tsunami and then a pressure cooker of “what will you do next year?!” I escape to my mom’s so I can stand in the ocean and ground myself through the rush of thoughts, emotions, and stress of each new year. I keep going back, no matter how hard it is to get there. Last year it took 3 days of driving and a few near-accidents… but we made it. I think it’s important to take the time and find the places that help me reflect and ground myself. Every year, it brings me back home. Home is important. I hope you have places, people, or things that make you feel at home.

My story this week is actually a few stories about me and snow.

I have always hated being cold. I don’t think I ever liked the snow. I remember making snow angels when we lived in Maine, but I think I ran back inside as soon as the snowman and pictures were done. I wasn’t a fan of the cold or the snow, even as a kid. I remember visiting my grandfather in the snow and watching it from the windows, refusing to go outside. I remember my cousins going out into the snow and giving into peer pressure – and hating it. My grandfather liked snowmobiling… I never went snowmobiling. I did go out on the 4x4s with him, though. I was a little wild with those. I think I was about 10 or 12ish when we were out together and I whipped around the helipad (it was a very rural area so there was a helipad in case of emergencies out in the middle of the forest) causing the 4×4 to go up on two wheels – sideways. I rode horses, so I naturally shifted my weight up and it fell back down, but it scared him.

Snow. Right. I went sledding one time when I didn’t want to go. I was a bit of a pain because sometimes I just didn’t want to do “fun” things. I would never let it go and have fun, not when I was a child. As an adult, I am able to let go and have more fun in those moments – but as a child, heck no. So, my parents convinced me to go out and sled for a bit. I don’t know how long I lasted, but I do remember spending a large amount of time sitting in the back of the car with my toes and fingers freezing. I was not happy about it. I was pretty good at keeping myself company, but I just remember being the only kid that day that had no fun at the sledding hill… I spent most of our time shivering in the back seat of the car instead.

My last story is the first night on my last trip to my mom’s for my Winter escape to the ocean. We got stuck in a nasty blizzard. Before we got stuck, we lost visibility in an instant, which caused me to immediately slow down. We came up suddenly on a stopped semi truck, but we didn’t hit it. Then, a red Kia had stopped behind us, gotten hit by a truck, and spun toward us – stopping less than a foot away. We were incredibly lucky. There were over 30 damaged semi trucks on the freeway in that area, while we slowly found our way past the accidents, I found myself thinking about those signs in grocery stores every winter. “Out of stock due to winter weather.” I thought about the lives these accidents are hurting – potentially lives lost. Why? Because we rely on the transportation of goods in Winter. Snow. Ice. Livelihoods can be lost in an instant over eggs, or paper, or shampoo. In a time of reflection, it made me grateful we have any of those things – and sad for every single person who was suffering that day.

That night, we lost visibility again, on the same freeway. I had to follow a tow truck to the nearest exit. I would say I was the most scared I’ve ever been while driving, but the accident was scarier. At least with the dark, headlights were visible and less vehicles were on the road. I knew we’d be okay with the tow truck nearby. I crawled my car to the only hotel at that exit. Yeah, it was full. I somehow missed the “no” in “no vacancy” and pulled my toddler out of the car to the front desk. The woman behind the counter said they didn’t have any rooms, but when I said “Okay, do you have any recommendations? Is there any other option in the area?” She asked me if it was just me and my child… and it was. She gave us a room that didn’t have a working sink – they weren’t supposed to rent it out, but if she offered anything resembling a place with a heater and a bed – I would take it. I barely made it to the hotel from the freeway; I wasn’t getting back on that freeway. We used the tub to wash our hands and I was again incredibly grateful for our luck. Sometimes, I think, it’s important for us to find ourselves in desperate circumstances to remember how great we have it in this world. Now, if we’d had to curl up together in the car to sleep for the night – it would be hard to find things to be grateful for. If we’d been damaged or injured in the accident earlier that day, it would have been hard to find things to be grateful for. The reflection matters. I don’t know why we were lucky, but I have a tendency to be lucky, and I’m grateful for it every day. May we all be so lucky.

This Winter, I hope you find some peace in your reflection.

Love, -S.