“I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future – the timelessness of the rocks and the hills – all the people who have existed there. I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape – the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.”
― Andrew Wyeth 
I hate the cold, with a passion. Spring, summer, and early autumn, with their warmth and lushness and never-ending sounds, are my times. No matter how hard I try to reframe it, I loathe winter for its dark, bitter bleakness.
We still have a young one at home. My need to separate from the chaos and noise that once was a lifeline disturbs and disappoints me. I love the idea of it, but cannot embrace it without limit as I once did. My need for space and retrospection intrudes. The forces that drive me have changed, and I feel powerless to redirect them. Like autumn into winter, I feel chill, dry, dark and barren.
I try to deny its power, fight it off with activity and positive thinking, but just as I thought I knew myself, reality began knocking at the door, a brittle tree limb in the windy cold. Every time I let down my resolve, it moves me along in its direction—like an undertow. It lays bare things that have, until now, been artfully covered. All is there to see. Often I do not find it pleasing.
What I have made, and what I haven’t, lie exposed, with no decorative vines laden with scented flowers. No chatter of beautiful songbirds. No delightful, rich chaos. I must look at it all, with both morbid interest and delight. Sort it out. Own it. This is the work of my age, and it is not easy. No wonder my body fights back with flashes of heat, sparks in the darkness, waking me in the night. It would like to be elsewhere, not trapped in this unpleasantness.
Tragic and painful memories have lost their sting, found quiet places to rest. Now it is the sweet ones that elicit tears and pain from deep within–the loss of things I once took for granted, that seemed so small and ordinary at the time.
In the midst of the intensity, is a child to care for. Not a grandchild I can send home, but one who relies on me. Every day. (And four others who are grown, but not quite.) Gifts, I know, but difficult to manage the back and forth between their joyful exuberance, and my need to isolate and reflect-tough work, switching gears with a less agile set of equipment.
It is good that she is here. She drags me back into the light when I would choose darkness, and demands that I enjoy the laughter and the moment before I hide again. She is at once the bane of my existence and my saving grace. The anger and irritation that her energy elicits also arouse courage within me to forge ahead with this necessary process.
I am afraid, and uncomfortable, and often just plain empty on this barren plain. Being forced to get up, put one foot in front of the other to care for this child, is reminding me that I am strong inside. I can do this.
There is loss and grieving galore here, the unused time, the paths not taken, words that cannot be taken back, and those that were never said. In my mind, whole lifetimes of things never accomplished–as though it were possible to have taken several roads within this one allotment. But the one I took was the right one for me, and the adventure continues. These days are no less beautiful and full than the ones whose loss I grieve. Small and ordinary. I will remember them as sweet and irreplaceable.
How blessed I am to have five people, much younger than myself, who pull me back into the sparkle and wonder, force me to engage in life when I least desire it; laugh, and demand time, and give me reason to move out of my cocoon. What I least want is what I most need. They come together around the fire, delight in snow days, bundle up and go outdoors to play.