Everyday Canvas

On Winter: The Light and the Dark of It

Prompt: Now that we've had the winter solstice, how does the official beginning of winter make you feel?

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Winter solstice…the shortest day and the longest night in the Northern Hemisphere…what a phenomenon, and an astronomical one to boot, which began when our planet started spinning about 4.5 billion years ago!

Winter has officially begun. Where I live winter is a random event. It means milder weather, not as hot as the usual scorcher days. Today, for example, it will be in early eighties with sixties at night, but thanks to the front arriving from north, Christmas will be around 40's to 60's. Not too bad, by northern criteria; here, however, the way the houses are built, the openness of them, lets the rooms feel a chill, despite the heating systems.

Winter or any other season, the weather has always been a common denominator, a conversational crutch at times, and one of humankind's greatest preoccupations, since what we can do depends on it. Weather is something we are never sure of, despite the multitude of weather-people on the news.

Yet, who needs to be foretold, especially inside a warm house on a cold winter day? Winter, when you either brave the cold wind, grey skies, bare trees, in Eskimo clothing and boots or stay in wrapped in a blanket with the book you finally can read in peace…

And, what's winter without snow! It's been years since I have seen it. Once upon a time, in my northern residency days, the silent snow fell like cotton balls covering our backyard as sluggish streaks of wood smoke from the chimneys climbed into the low-lying clouds. At night, the full moon on the pond and through the trees blended its light with that of the blanketed snow on the rolling hills. That image still burns in my memory.

Yet, there is a harsher side to winter than delightful snow scenes. Those, I could probably not weather so well in this old age, and there are other things I cannot take even more than the weather's antics either, which make me recall Shakespeare's words:
"Blow, blow, thou winter wind
Thou art not so unkind
As man's ingratitude;"

It may just be that we only evaluate what we see in front of us and feel with our simplistic five senses, sometimes negatively, like winter, while what is not so evident,yet dangerous, may lurk in the shadows baring its sharp teeth waiting to hurt us more deeply than the cold and the ice.