WINTER WEARY

Well.....quite the winter we are having in Ontario. Snow, ice, bone chilling cold, more snow. And we are barely half way through it. Even now as I look out the window the phrase "swirling flakes of snow" which is usually so endearing, is not. We have shovelled 3 times so far today and it is only a little past noon. 

In fact, we are spending a fair bit of time with Mr. & Mrs. Shovel. Not great conversationalists, but always willing to help out.
We, the people, are weary. 
Weary of -35 Celsius.
Weary of boots, coats, hats and mittens.
Our cars are weary and grumble loudly at the request to start up and get moving.
We are Winter Weary.
I can hear the collective audible sigh.
A few of the lucky ones escape to balmier regions of earth and return tanned and relaxed. 

That won't be me. I will be hunkering it out to the bitter end.
I've started reading an autobiography of one of my favourite authors, Elizabeth Goudge. She has been gone for some time now but I love the way she writes. She thought the same way I do and I would aspire to put my thoughts down in a similar manner. Except where it comes to snow.

Here is what she wrote:

"In the company with all children and most dogs, I though snow the wonder of the world. The snow-light filling the house with magic as the white flakes drifted down in windless  silence, the splendour when the sun came out and hills and fields and trees sparkled under the arc of blue sky, the thought of the things one did in the snow, tobogganing and snowballing and building a snowman; it was all ecstasy. And somewhere tucked away at the back of one’s mind was the knowledge that every crystal in the vast whiteness, though too small for the human eye to see, was fashioned like a flower or a star. How could snow not be the wonder of the world?”

What a perspective! My hat is off to you Elizabeth! And she's right. Snow really is incredible stuff. 

So, in the midst of mine and everyone else's winter weariness, especially those like me who are not leaving on a jet plane any time soon, l will try to look at winter with a new perspective.

It gives me more time to read.

I can spend more time in the kitchen, my go-to place to wind down, to make soups and bread and soul comforting food.

It is pretty darn quiet out there.

I appreciate my fireplace all the more.

And lastly, all that snow that I have to shovel, every single little flake, is fashioned uniquely like a flower or a star.

Round one of snow shovelling at 6:30 am this morning