Season's change

We are in the midst of the first big storm of the season! I’ve just driven home in a snow as thick as fog with visibility being at best about a block. Outside the city limits that low visibility might be a more common occurrence but it is quite a rarity here in town. The light, fluffy flakes are coming down in a constant stream. The wind is strong and steady. If this keeps up we’re in for a snow day tomorrow! A snow day! Ah, those words delight at any age.

The path I took home was through an historic district that has gaslight-styled streetlights. They have a more diminutive height than their newer runway-model cousins and give off a pinkish light which made the storm feel kind of friendly. The trees lining the street were hard to see but when they did finally come into view it was both stunning and startling to see their dark form stand in complete contrast to the swirling world of white around them.

Walking in from the car there wasn’t a sound to hear. Earlier in the evening it was so cold that the snow creaked and groaned under each footstep. I did not take it as a personal commentary- that below zero snow has a certain sound no matter your weight. Now it’s warmer, relatively, so the crunch has gone.

In Winter the world comes as close to complete silence as it ever will. The quiet found in a hibernating world is exclusive to months of snow. Here the hubbub of activity available during Summer’s long days is a distant memory. The planning and preparation time that is Fall has past and the promise of the new and soft green that is Spring is a still a dream. Winter asks us to set that all that was and all that will be aside and just be.

It is enough to have quiet and calm, to be quiet and calm. Again and again in a world cocooned in white Winter shows us the peace it has to offer. It’s easy enough to get caught up in the frenetic pace of the holidays. It’s tempting to keep up the speed of going and doing but Winter asks us to let go and slow down, even if it has to produce freezing rain to get us do that.

When scraping my car of said freezing rain and/or clearing it of snow it is then that I become re-familiarized with all the car's quirky and unusual crevasses. Design choices that might never be an issue in, say, Texas become common adversaries here in the wintertime. If anyone at Pontiac is interested (and they may just be ready to listen now), I’ve got some opinions about the windshield wiper and wheel well designs that I’d like to share…

On Thursday I drove back down to the Mayo with Mom and Dad for my fourth tri-monthly check up. It’s been a little more than a year since my surgery which is hard to believe. In fact, in transferring dates to the 2009 calendar I found myself stymied at the thought that it has been a year and a half since I first found the lump. A year and a half. Really? I feel like I’ve been in a time machine and now find myself here at the close of 2008 wondering what has happened.

The answer is, of course, a lot. In these months since the completion of treatment integrating what it means to live life post-cancer has left me feeling like a Maple tree in the spring: tapped out. I’m in recovery from a year and a half of life lived outside the lines. Not that I had any idea how it would be in the first place, but it is really different than anything I’ve ever experienced and it’s taking some getting used to.

In these past months I’ve been doing my best to find small ways to restore myself. As much as I and probably the rest of the world dream of winning the lottery in order to take time off the chances of that actually occurring are quite slim, especially when you don’t buy a ticket. Instead, I have built small bits of meditation into my workdays to keep me calm and weekly T’ai Chi classes help keep me centered.

So this Winter I will be turning inward to renew and refuel. I will do less and be more. And as we move further into this season of rest I continue to say thank you, thank you, thank you for just about everything you can imagine. It is by no small miracle that we are all here in this world of quiet together.

Wishing you the peace of the season,
Karen