Monday Night Confession

At this point in January, my head begins to feel fuzzy from lack. My fingers have not encountered soil outside in months. My eyes have not seen green; I look at the deciduous trees that ring our property, their bare skeletons, and feel a dull longing. I begin to dream about my own childhood floors, flooded in sunlight, about standing under huge trees waiting for the bus, the wind sweeping up through coffee bushes, around the red clay track where I once ran hurdles (yes, me, really and truly), and sweeping around my own seventeen year old legs. I do not feel sentimental for this afternoon, for the wind and the sky wider than the sea, because I want to be seventeen again. No. It's because I want to feel warm again, and alive, and full of the energy that comes from sweater-weather and being outdoors with all my senses open and receiving, in no hurry to rush anywhere.

I tried hard this year, as I believe I try every year, to feel optimistic and full of vim for winter. This year, I swore to myself, I will get out every day for a walk. Winter will not get me down. A friend asked me yesterday if I suffer from SAD, and I don't think that's it so much as the fact that I was utterly spoiled growing up in Nairobi, where it was never colder than sixty-something degrees and never hotter than mid-eighties. My entire school experience was marked by outdoor living; we sat in classrooms (often with the doors open to the sweet air) and then walked outside to talk around our lockers (they were indeed also outside), to eat lunch under trees on a hill. The whole concept of a high school being contained within walls was foreign to me. I spent most of my years in Nairobi, whether it was at home or at school, barefoot.

And I hate being cold. I can't spin it any other way, and I will not tonight. I will just admit it: I am pathetic, and I absolutely, positively, abhor being cold. I see it as something I must endure, and that makes walks sort of silly; and though my brave, lovely mother has made us have picnics in sub-zero, snowy weather, and admonished us to think of it all as a great adventure, I have a hard time convincing myself that this is a good idea.

I have never been allowed to complain about anything. Instead, I've been charged to always see and seize the positive and celebrate it so furiously that the negative melts to nothing but a little puddle at my feet. So be it, but not tonight. Winter, I am tired of you. Runny noses, I am tired of all of you. Colds, begone. Frigid sheets, yuck to you too. Hats, scarves, mittens, coats, wool socks and snow boots, to all the mornings I have been tempted to swear as I bundle yet another child, end immediately. Bring on the robins, the mud, the flip flops and faces lifted to sun. I'm ready. Now.