Friday, November 23, 2007

Things Explained.

I've blinked and it's winter. The yellow and brown of the leaves is now obscured by the white crisp snow. I sit in the living room, looking out through the porch screen as large white flakes fall to the ground. My eyes follow each snowflake as they spin before finding a final resting place. A view straight from inside a snow globe. Welcome winter, I say to myself.

I'd be fooling someone if I said I loved winter. The first snowfall is always magical, but the unyieldly wind and rushing to and from is tiresome on my body. It's hard to believe it has been nearly two years since I've traveled wintery streets filled with the sounds of snowplows and the smell of salt. But I still find myself eager to haul out a sled and a shovel. Last year it was fall and the beginning of winter that brought out some of the sharpest of edges last year, now it's like riding a horse you had been bucked off of before as you slip back into the cold mornings and grey skies that greet the sun for a few hours. Last year at this time was when it felt like my relationship with C was imploding, as it underwent the fierce growth of a relationship that was moving past a life hurt.

If you sift back through moments and memories you can count how many times conversations may have gone amiss. We can all reaccount times when two people were talking but they were talking about two different things. This happened last winter, with the fine brush strokes of different agendas and feelings and work being done. There's no use in trying to figure out what the reason for the pain was or why. Almost all of it was a product of external stresses: from work and life, that had become distilled in the small orbit of our love, although some was internal - new dreams being realized, a heart casualty, sleep deprivation, and a lack of time to ourselves.

So the trepidation is there. Only faintly visible in my pulse. Little snafus, a snag, it bears an undue weight even though we are so far from there; our love more like an aging merlot becoming integrated, refined, and full of rich spices and aroma.

Seasons are funny like this in their ability to conjure up accounts of change and growth, and reflect pivotal moments in life when unsteady ground turned into a rock foundation. Last season was marked with an angst, but a hope and steady drive toward betterment, and I am thrilled to no end to say that this season the angst has been bucked and that an effervescent confidence is flooding all branches of life.

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