Hope Road

Winter is a creeping confinement. One November day, snowflakes drift down gently and surprisingly. Snow is a novelty, a refreshing glimmer against the cold gray of late autumn. Then, if it’s a good year, snow lies peacefully in sloping white heaps throughout December, enough to look pretty but not to impede Christmas preparations. We need warm clothes, hats and mittens and scarves, but these items of clothing haven’t been worn for months. They’re cozy. The bite in the chilly air brings zest to the season.

Then comes January, and after the chaos and glitter of the holidays, winter settles in to stay - a little more serious, even grim now. Snowfall after snowfall after snowfall. The parking lots are bordered by white mountains. The wind swirls clouds of snow above the frozen streets. The mornings are black and bitterly crisp, and cars are buried and scraped off, buried and scraped off, day after day after day. Sidewalks are treacherous, still inches deep from the night before. Regular shoes are out of the question; boots are the order of the day. The wind keeps us hurrying from building to building.

By February, the gray sky seems leaden. Weary of wind and cold and always more snow, and we are quieter, more serious, following our daily routines with plodding concentration. Winter is layered; there is snow beneath the ice beneath the snow. The occasional thaw day is full of rain and dripping as everything melts, then freezes over again by the next morning.

We are now only tolerating winter. Our starry-eyed Christmas welcomes are long gone. We try not to say too much, try not to complain, or to hope too often for a snow day. We huddle indoors. Everything seems to have taken on a sort of dullness, and even though we are trying not to anticipate spring too strongly, we know it will come eventually, and we cannot help longing for that day.

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Inside the library, I sit with my chin on my hand, gazing at the wintry tundra outside, and imagining the freedom of spring, like unlocking a prison door. Images float through my mind. A wide expanse of green field, dotted with weeds and wildflowers. Wearing a skirt on a sunny morning. Driving with the windows down. Lying on a blanket outside. Taking a shortcut through the grass. Watching the daffodils bloom. Opening the window in our living room. Wearing short sleeves and flip-flops. Swinging at the park. Sitting outside at a coffee shop. Smiling at everyone as I pass them on campus, feeling the season’s contagious energy. Dodging Frisbees on my way to class. Seeing the first firefly. Going on walks late at night in the warm stillness under a big black star-spangled sky.

Filed under: Personal Reflection on February 19th, 2008