"blow, blow thou winter wind.."

Snow.  Magical, delicate, beautiful snow.  It floats past my window this Saturday morning adding to the inches already pushed aside by plows and shovels down on the street and sidewalk.  Winter has finally come to Chicago, making as delayed an entrance as summer did last year.  Earlier this week the mercury was pushing 60 degrees, and this morning it was 14 when I awoke at my usual 5 a.m.

I've come to realize that I'm a winter person.  Not the wet, messy, cold-but-not-cold-enough-to-snow winter of my native North Alabama, but the oh-so-cold and blustery winter of this mid-west mecca.  Donning boots and scarves and down and hat and gloves to make a simple trek of 3 or 4 blocks can be exhilarating.  The cold wind seems fresher, the icy particles in my face are invigorating, and the warmth of returning home for hot chocolate to ease the chill is a treat not so enjoyed otherwise.

Winter days also invite quiet, reflective time inside, whereas summer days make me feel I should be out, doing, going, "enjoying".  I'm more an inside, quiet kind of person.  Reading, knitting, stitching, painting are winter activities, and things I enjoy much.  Not to mention that if I am out on a winter day such as this, there's a different beauty to the trees, the river, and even the buildings shrouded in white.  There is as much laughter of children in the park as there is in summer, although muffled beneath the layers of wool.

Of course there are down sides just as in summer - the piles of snow on the streets turn ugly and gray with soot and slush in time, maneuvering is tricky on foot or on tires, frozen toes and fingers and nose are fun only so long.  Nights are long, and sunlight rare, and eventually the cloudy skies become depressing.  But there's always the promise that Spring is coming; it may come later here, but it does come.

I saw a quote, something like "walking on snow makes me feel like I'm walking on clouds", and thought how nice it is to see a positive remark about winter.  Not the "now is the winter of our discontent", or the "winter of our life".  But, then, the winter of discontent is turned to summer by the "son of York" (from Richard III), and the winter of our life is followed by the eternal light of heaven.  It doesn't have to mean a dark end of days but instead can mean a time to enjoy.

Even "old age" should be as much a time to enjoy as the spring of youth, and for one watching the leaves of autumn begin to fall, I can't see that my life is any less remarkable.  There is still much to experience and learn, and it is done with so much more understanding of what's important.  Any obstacle is just something to get around or over, not a reason to stop.  Winter is just a different season, with beauty of its own, if we stop looking at it as something to dread and rush by like a cemetery, reaching at us with bare-branch fingers to hold us in its cold grasp.

I would not relive my youth any more than I would relive last summer, knowing I couldn't change anything or do anything differently.  And so I would not miss this winter any more than I would purposefully miss whatever is left of my life.  I will not go into the winter of life fussing and moaning about the cold and snow and wishing for it to be over soon.  Or that I could skip it altogether.  All seasons are wonderful, joyous times with their own flavors and scents and lessons, whether we're talking weather or life.

And now I bundle to brave the winds and snow and cold - must get some milk so that I can make that hot chocolate to enjoy when I get back from getting the milk while braving the cold so that I need hot chocolate to warm me up.