January

Allowing for all the supposedly lovely winter things — the hot cocoas and toddies, the wood fires and the wool sweaters, down blankets and knitted hats. Allowing for the steaming pots and mugs of cheer, custards and cookies, the holidays and the Sundays, the cozy coffee clusters of rosy cheeked friends.

Allowing for all of the bullshit they tell you about winter, let’s be honest — it must be said —

winter sucks.

Here’s what I wrote first, in a half-assed attempt at an artful thing—

Under the lowering glowering January sky, in the mess of bedclothes, a struggle to pull on the first layer, armor against the cold. After many more layers, after a dazed shuffle down through the cold gray house, I’m out, pulled by the two dogs — two-in-hand, as it were — down the snowy road, under the fur of heavy gray, flakes on lashes and down the nape. Still shaking off sleep, lengthening the muscles in the coiled winter body, a slow trudge while the dogs get busy.

It’s so cold. I want to turn into myself, crawl into a nest of blankets near a fire and hide. The air cracks near zero, the nostrils fill with tiny porcelain bits, the doors and my boots in the snow sound different. No echo, no round sound anywhere. Everything is crisp and sharp — sound, vision, breath. Don’t want to talk, think. I want food, hot drink, peace, silence, blankets. I envy the cat’s fur coat and her ability to lounge in the chair by the stove all day. Knees ache, my hips, feet, all ache with the cold and the inactivity. Hands are cracked and thirsty, the body itches, feels like sandpaper.

Truth, I wrote that cold bit last winter when we were in the depths of record-breaking frigid hell. It was shocking, really, hard for months, endlessly, tediously cold.

This winter is mild, by comparison. We dance around in the 20’s and 30’s, for the most part, and I’m told that I’m supposed to be happy. It’s so easy! they say. This is nothing! they sing. (They look a lot like my husband.)

But the truth isn’t artful, at all. It’s ugly.

It’s gray and cold and it gives you tin man joints. It sits on your chest and blows little bits of blinding frost in your face all day, even when you are enrobed in high tech fabrics and sucking on warm mash and tea. It robs you of your joy and your spark and steals away with a little bit of your will to live. It sits in your brain and whispers things about sadness and madness and tells mean little jokes that aren’t a bit funny.

It breaks your car and slicks your steps, so that you just might fall and kill your brittle-jointed self. It sprinkles dust and hair and bits of things you’ve never seen before all around your house, in your bed and in your food, and there’s no fresh air. Not in here, anyway — only out there, where the cold assaults you, oppresses you, and the air is ice in your lungs.

I’m not, clearly, one of those outdoorsy winter people. You know them, they really do have rosy cheeks and they buy ‘winter gear’ and get excited when the sky dumps a shit ton of snow on them. I tried when I was younger, sort of — I went ice-skating and sledding, consumed hand pies and hot alcohol around fires at winter parties, stomped my feet like a horse and pretended to be happy and hearty. It was largely a lie.

Winter sucks and it’s just the truth. Say it with me, admit it, it’s okay. It’s a cold, endless mess and it tries very very hard to break you and the only prize is that when — if — you come out the other side alive and relatively sane, you feel kind of badass.

Go ahead, smile and ski and rosy up your cheeks all you want. I know the bitter truth, the numb white toes and the hair full of static, the rough knees and the stinky thermals. You’re not fooling me.

What I really want is a tall gin and tonic with a big fat slice of lime, 80 degrees and an ocean breeze, sun in my face and that marvelous loose-limbed supple body that summer allows us. Long walks, big gulps of fresh comfortable air, deep sleep.

I can’t have it, not yet.

Winter is a waiting, a slow counting of hours until the sun, the snowdrops, the thaw.

The only thing left is to build a bridge to spring with fire and butter and chocolate, with meats and wines and porridge. Build it with wool and bind it with blood and follow it, step by step, as the light builds, to spring.

And Tanqueray.