O, wind, if winter comes, can spring be far behind?”
Percy Bysshe Shelley, poet, “Ode to the West Wind”
On Tuesday, it was 57 degrees here. I say this because for the last week or two, it’s been about 27 to 36 degrees Fahrenheit during the day (and in the teens and below in the morning). The warmer temperature is significant because it meant I could go outside to the mailbox a mere 20 feet away without having to bundle up with hat, gloves, heavy jacket, actual shoes, and hug my arms around myself with my head down running to the mailbox and back hoping I don’t freeze to death and my husband accidently roll over my body when he gets home from work. Yes, it has been that cold. And I would hope my husband would at least drive around the frozen lump in the driveway.
I decided after another Zoom meeting I logged onto that I would sit outside for about an hour. I needed the fresh air. And my creative juices were screaming to be released. It’s been so dry inside that I seriously cannot feel my fingers; they are stiff and inoperable despite the bottles of hand cream I absorb. I struggle to form the Vulcan sign: “Live long and prosper.”
After I made tea, I set a towel on my bench swing since all the comfy cushions are inside for now, laying useless on my sun porch furniture where I haven’t sat much because there isn’t a lot of heat in that space; and spread myself out.
The sun, however, does not rest in the bench’s area in the afternoon (but it is shining in the sun porch), so it was nippy in the shade. My hands and feet, which were encased in wool socks (my feet, not my hands), began to freeze. My green tea started to chill, and I realized this was going to be a short hour. But it was okay, because I was enjoying the 57 degrees away from the computer. I observed small patches of ice in the roadway and in some yards where the sun didn’t reach, small remnants of the actual winter we had three weeks earlier. But still.
Apparently on sporadic warmer days, others have the same idea to get out in the open, because many of my neighbors decided at the same time I wanted a bit of quiet to get out and walk at a leisurely pace, with their multiple dogs who cause all the other dogs in the neighborhood to vociferate in a loud chorus, which prompts said neighbors to shout to their partners, and now it’s a Beethoven symphony of chaos performed by amateurs, conducted by a walrus.
But I was outside, in the fresh air, stubbornly sticking to toughing it out. I tried to avoid looking at my yard and porch where I neglected the usual early winter cleanup and now it looks dreary. I need at least two weeks of 57-degree weather until I finally decide to trim, pull, and gather the deadness to the corner where the environmental truck can collect it all, and my garden can breathe and begin its regrowth. Instead, I listened to my happy, content, and chubby birds between dog barks. I lasted nearly an hour, and my hands and feet froze.
But I was happy.
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