Darkness Descends

The air stings and leaves turn dry and light as crumpled paper. The heady scents of full-blown blooms are now dumb with cold and the only life in the air is old mould. Winter is the now of our discontent.

I suppose it’s my job as a lifestyle-magazine editor to sing the glories and praises of winter—to be upbeat about everything for that matter—but gosh it’s hard. I grew up in Winnipeg, where winter meant short sharp days of blinding sun and snow and air that cut like a knife with every breath outside. As teenagers we didn’t wear boots in winter because nothing is warm at minus 30 degrees anyhow and there is certainly no danger of getting your feet wet; there is no damp at minus 30.

As a young adult I moved to Kingston where I learned the true meaning of “a damp cold”. At first I could not understand that there wasn’t snow everywhere, continually, from November to March. (Snow melts in winter? It can rain in winter? Not in Winnipeg.) I marvelled at weeks of days when the temperature would surface above freezing. But by the arrival of my first spring as an Ontarian I had realised the downside: four months of endless cloud and wet feet. Feet always wet because if your boots aren’t waterproof the wet gets in, and if your boots are waterproof the sweat can’t get out.

Now living in Toronto, it’s a little warmer but every bit as grey, almost as wet and twice as grimy.

I’ve learned a few local tricks for coping with winter. I can do the icy-day cha-cha from the parking lot to the office in my indoor shoes with some aplomb and I now start nagging my husband to shovel as soon as it starts to snow, before it partially melts and freezes into a solid platform for litigation. I know how far I have to go to get to a full-service gas station. I walk on the side of the street where cars are parked to minimize the risk of a drive-by soaking. Useful strategies but cold comfort.

Today is darkly cloudy and my psyche smarts from the jerk back to standard time. The chrysanthemums are still blooming, but I no longer believe them. Winter is coming soon and fast and hard, and with winter comes the cold, the wet, the dark and the dead.

So what I have to offer, in lieu of an upside, is an exhortation to acceptance and a stab at meaning.

Every thoughtful thing, from Chinese medicine to Newtonian physics to the writings of Northrop Frye, knows this much is true:

It goes both ways.

For every yin there is a yang, for every push there is a pull, and the outward gaze wants introspection for a fuller view. Opposites don’t attract; they are the halves of a whole. Hopeful spring, exuberant summer and fiery fall must have restful winter.

Well… (the crosspatch says) that’s four seasons and “opposites” implies two things, and besides it’s only in the temperate part of the world that we have such different seasons—

But I say hush. I’m looking for meaning, not facts.

Winter will come as it must. We shall survive as we must.

The plants and certain animals will have their rest. And we shall rest in our way (after Christmas—the ladies know what I mean), praising the slim light of day and embracing the comfort of dark evenings by the fire with seed catalogues and plans for gardens where the peonies don’t flop and our knees don’t ache from weeding.