At the beginning of winter, I take delight in the coming of the cold. I relish the darkness and welcome the holiday lights: twinkling ornaments, candles, and luminarias. I look forward to winter and am encouraged by celebrations. But as winter drags on through January and February, I become restless, listless almost. The gray sky, the sooty snow, the yellow-gray grass poking through – all these create a melancholy mood. I become so tired and joyless that all I want to do is hibernate. I know spring is coming, but I can’t quite feel it or see it. I need pink and green, and what I encounter is foggy gray and dirty white.
This urge to hibernate leads me to gather comforters and pillows, making a cavernous nest. I snuggle down with a pot of tea by my bedside and a stack of books. I read and nap and read and nap again and again. I could spend the whole weekend with books, Earl Grey tea, and my down comforter. This kind of hibernation rests my weary winter soul. I’m looking for a way to sustain myself until spring, to read and take nourishment from words and ideas.
Recently, I went to a local bookstore and scoured the shelves for something uplifting. Last week, I read two middle-grade fiction novels about the Holocaust, and I needed a turn towards the happy. As I combed the bookstore, I picked up a few titles and read the back covers, looking for inspiration. A book in blue with a heart-shaped cloud caught my eye. It was Somehow: Thoughts of Love by Anne Lamott. Anne Lamott. She is one of my favorite authors – funny and irreverent. Two of my favorite books are: Bird by Bird and Help, Thanks, Wow! I am amazed by the skill with which Anne strings her ideas together. She talks about real-life tragedies and triumphs with such insight. Her faith is unquestionable.
Somehow, she has lived through childhood trauma, addiction, bad relationships, setbacks in her writing career, and still, she stays positive and lends a hand to a friend and an encouraging word to her readers. I find this to be very courageous. She keeps going, keeps searching for joy, for connection – and she succeeds through pure tenacity. And then she fails and writes about it, leaving you breadcrumbs so that you can climb down from the precipice and live again. Lamott is no longer a young rebel; she has made it to old age and still has her spirit intact. I deeply admire her for that. When describing the wildfires that devastated Northern California a few years ago, Lamott writes, “That is not charity. It is the reality of being human, of needing help and being helpers. This is who we are, this is our true selves. We have been the person trapped and person biking to them. Love is call-and-response.” To me, her words get at the heart of what it is to be human, to live in a world where people care about each other, where there are certainly tragedies, but there is also hope. The world will keep spinning on with and without me; it will endure, somehow.
Somehow
Winter storm predicted –
high winds, lots of snow,
a nor’easter, a blizzard
racing up the eastern coast.
The snow starts
early in the morning.
New flakes cover old, sooty snow
making the fields sparkle.
Now, I can no longer
make out the woods beyond.
They are just a smudge of gray.
My whole world has gone white.
I look out my window
and give into grief.
I sob for everything
I have ever lost.
I take deep breaths,
watch the white swirl
flakes flying, whipping,
the solemn, sturdy pine.
I sink down, snuggle
under mounds of covers,
hibernating, rest my head
and slowly drift to sleep.
Winter surrounds me,
I trudge through the storm.
I cannot see my hands,
I cannot feel my toes.
I am desperate for warmth,
I keep walking knee deep
in the snow, further and further,
wind biting my cheeks raw.
There is something inside
that doesn’t let me quit.
I stumble face down
in a mound of snow.
I am desperate for warmth,
I cry out for saving,
I hear only the wind
howling through the woods.
I thrash my hands and feet,
kicking against the white,
punching through – then
suddenly a patch of blue.
Look up and I see sky,
I know I will endure
and spring will return.
Surely it will, somehow.
Word Dancer: Literature, the Arts, & Education 