Alas! My memories cry. What once was the glorious medley of songbirds has now degenerated into the cacophony of carrion crows. The sky is changing, an azure blanket accented with voluptuous white clouds morphing into a stark grey field that has no beginning or end. The trees have finished their beautiful death throes, the thankless duty of providing the world with shade has ended with a illustrious gasp of color and exposition, until all that is left are the skeletons clattering in the whistling winds of winters breath.
This is the world I was born into, and it's approach is as frightening as the moment I inhaled my first breath. You see, I am a January baby. Born when winter is at its highest. The time in the northeast when the celebration of life is lulled into submission, a time when the heart hibernates a dreamless sleep that holds on to a single hope that it will all be over soon. Excuse my dread, but I have endured too many of these exhausting cycles to be conditioned for what is to come.
Winter is approaching my family as well. I packed my father up last week, drove him around to get his affairs in order, loaded the truck and hugged him goodbye. He moved to Miami. A perfect locale to spend the winter of your days, a place of eternal summer. My mother joins him at winters end. My ancestral home, the house where we settled and I was raised, is being sold and thus the summer of my own life, a place of warmth and security, is ending.
I am at a crossroads, many aspects of my once patterned life are in flux. A transitory state that i feel will be exciting but at the same time terrifying. I am not a fan of change, I enjoy routine. I suppose that is hardwired into me, yet deep within me I have this desire to seek exciting new things. I liken it to when I was a child and I would visit the creek in the summertime. I would stand on the cliff edge, terrified to jump, but when I would, I would realize the joy of the moment and never have the fear to jump again until the following year. I fret at the precipice. Now I fret at the edge of finding a new place to live and being alone.
As I ponder the oncoming winter, I can sit back and appreciate her in all her stark beauty. For winter is the planter of hope. She gives the gift of appreciation, of a notion that change is good, that right around the corner a new life will rise from the decay and allow the future to start anew. Maybe this winter will be different and a little taste of being alone will grant me a new appreciation of the oncoming life ahead.
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