The Season of Quiet

During the summer I sit on the enclosed porch, look around the colorful and leafy yard and try to imagine the winter scene of bareness and gray. Now it's the opposite. I sit on my porch wearing a down coat and warm hat, my legs covered by a blanket, and try to imagine the leaves are still on the trees.

I am finally at the point in the year where the lawn services are done for the season, the town is no longer collecting leaves (which doesn't stop some neighbors from putting to the curb whatever last leaves may have fallen) and the majority of the trees and shrubs are bare. I am happy to have the quiet, but the continuing cold and grayness of many days plus the darkness at 5 p.m. make me restless, tired and, sometimes, down because my gardening is done and migration is long over. I feel shut in, and it does not help that we are close to the end of another year and there is a more contagious form of COVID-19 that affects even fully vaccinated people like me. That means another winter of avoiding people in the streets and not visiting friends or family. 

But at least there is no snow, at least not yet.

New Hampshire, November 2021 (Margo D. Beller)

To some it is soothing to have a blanket of snow on the ground, the white providing a nice contrast with the gray skies. Those who depend on snow for revenue from winter activities are very happy to have the snow. Those with the strength and energy to snowshoe, ski or snowmobile are also very glad to see the white stuff.

Not me.

It is when the snow falls that I feel my age and am at my most vulnerable. I think of last year when we had two feet of snow on our property. Will that next shovelful of snow from the back path make me breathless or have some sort of attack? How long will it take my husband (MH) to find me if I keeled over? My neighbors look after their own properties and are not inclined to help the people next door they don't know so well. We have no children or grandchildren so we hire someone to plow our long driveway. We do the rest, carefully, on the off-chance someone would want to visit. That has yet to happen.

Cardinal in winter (Margo D. Beller)

It has not been the best year for me. I look back on my health issues and am thankful I survived them and the subsequent treatments, and that MH has been here to watch over me and chauffeur me to medical appointments. I have been regaining my strength, trying to make up for lost time. But I can never be 100% again. I can't go back in time, much as I'd like to do.

So I sit bundled on the porch, refusing to confine myself to the house, watching the feeder birds, enjoying the quiet and looking ahead to the return of spring.