Our winter within

The great Valentine’s Day snow of 2004 is legendary in Central Texas. My sister and I spent the day gargling snow and making angels in our Walmart windbreakers. It all seemed unreal, a dream. A decade later, the Midwest taught me how to actually weather Winter. When the temperature dropped to negative 32 degrees one year, my friends threw fists of water into the air to watch it freeze. I learned how to cope with the cold. But I hadn’t learned to live with the Winter within.

This year many were experiencing Winter long before the first frost. Winter is marked by loss, as light and time grow less, and emptiness, as the landscape grows leaner. As I look out at bare-boned trees, I too feel fragile and exposed. Loss is lodged inside me. My great uncle died from Covid-19 two weeks ago. The month before, I attended my grandfather’s funeral service. In 2020, the deadliest year of my lifetime, millions lost their lives and livelihoods. We are in the thick of Winter.

I am trying to name the loss, to lament. I’m learning that the soul’s Winter is not about overcoming sadness, but acknowledging it. Fall and Spring are for transition, but Winter is for sitting at the lowest point. Winter is for being. We wait. We rest under the weight. This is not the dreamy Winter of my childhood, but a harsh and honest one.

It’s into the emptiness of winter that snow makes its grand entrance. For the last three days, everything has been glowing. Millions of snowflakes fuse together to protect our eyes from the bareness and replace a sense of absence with abundance. In a season of loss, snow not only brings joy, but feels to me like a promise: that the hollows within us and among us will someday be filled.