OP/ED: "Yippee! winter's coming," said no one, ever
By Christine Esovoloff
September – the month that summer comes to a screeching halt, kids go back to school, zucchinis take over the world, and Christmas commercials begin to play on T.V.
I have never been a real ‘September fan’ … to me, it has always represented a bleak, slippery slope leading to a dark pit of wintery despair.
Melodramatic?
Perhaps, but you can’t tell me you actually look forward to winter?
If you do, get some help, because there is nothing enjoyable about it. Okay, well, Christmas. Christmas is enjoyable. But that’s it! Okay, Hallowe’en isn’t bad either, but all the rest of the wintery stuff sucks!
I can’t stand any of it; the bundling up just to go shopping, the wet, muddy mess in my boot-room, the crappy driving conditions, the uber-high heating bills and the perpetual snot-buckets that my children become. (I mean snot in the literal sense by the way, their noses don’t stop running for eight months.)
However, I have decided that it may be time to change my tune … I mean, I can’t spend the rest of my life dreading eight out of the 12 months in a year.
That just seems silly.
Besides, with all of the climate change and global warming stuff, winter is just going to get worse. (sniff, sniff)
So I’ve decided I am going to do some soul-searching and find something to love about the fall, winter, and early spring seasons.
Such as, rather than locking my doors every autumn in fear that my neighbours and friends will drop off hoards zucchinis the size of baseball bats, I am going to grow zucchinis of my own and show up on their doorsteps, just for fun. Or I could just start making a whole lot of zucchini bread/muffins/pancakes and anything else you can put the suckers in. Either way, I am going to embrace this zucchini business!
Second, I am going to try (God, please help me with this one!) to find something enjoyable about the below zero weather and snow. Perhaps I could start some sort of winter sport, or … yeah, never mind, I’ll just stick with drinking hot chocolate indoors. And, as much as it pains me to admit it, the first few snowfalls are actually kind of pretty, as long as I am admiring them through a window from inside my cozy, warm house.
And maybe I’ll start to love the constant grey overcast and dreary cloud cover. After all, there is no risk of sun-burning my sensitive ginger skin. And the grey really brings out the coppery color in my hair. Or, I could just book a yearly trip to Mexico!
See! I’m getting good at this ‘put a positive spin on winter’ crap … I mean stuff. And maybe, just maybe, the one good thing about the lousy weather to come is that it will make me appreciate the good stuff when it comes back again (in eight long months). After all, if it was a balmy 30 degrees with glorious sunshine every day, surely we would tire of it, no? I’m certain I would get sick of the sandal wearing, the beach time, and drinking sangria on my deck while a soft breeze blows through the pages of the novel I’m reading.
Right?
Yeah, I didn’t think so either.
But at the very least, I may start to take such weather for granted. I mean, I don’t want to turn into some sort of weather snob!
So this is me, Christine, appreciating all of what Mother Nature offers … or at least trying to make the best of it. So if you see me trudging through the store in snow-covered boots, quietly sobbing, just hand me some vitamin D and a travel brochure (or at least some chocolate, chocolate usually helps) and remind me of my this column and of my newfound goal – to find something good about every season; even the long, dark, dreary, cold ones.
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