Delayed Gratification

Sometimes, it takes getting healthy again to realize how sick you were. Likewise, a good dose of sunshine also makes you realize how light deprived you were. Both were true for me the last few weeks, but I am finally back to my usual self and finding it so good to do a bit of writing, to put some of these disparate thoughts on the page.

I try very hard not to complain about winter, which I generally enjoy until the season digs in its heels. When the unrelenting cold and snow settle in, I cave after a while. Give me a variable winter any day with temperatures that bounce up and down, snow that falls and melts in short order, and days of clouds mixed with sun.

This winter and last year's version have tested me. In part, I think we find it hard to succomb to the uncontrollable and inevitable of the season in the modern era. It isn't simply the knowledge that the weather remains unbelievably gorgeous somewhere else, and anyone with a brain and the means is boarding a plane to hightail it to paradise. The digital age makes this all far too clear.

I also think that the demands on our lives in the modern era don't allow us to hibernate along with the other living things around us as we had evolutionarily done prior to the industrial revolution. As the farm slept, we slowed down and accomplished seasonal chores close to home, waiting to really jump into action with spring's arrival.

Now, the commute, the responsibilities, and the job remain usually farther afield than one's own home. This is even true for jobs that have a seasonality to them as is the case for my professor husband. The demands of the job now reach far beyond the lecture hall, and he could clone himself and still never come close to meeting the demands on his time.

As far as I can tell, winter is all about delayed gratification. Spring would certainly never be the most natural high I know, if it didn't follow on the heels of winter. So, I shouldn't be surprised that waking to a bit of sun peaking through the curtains over the bed this morning was amazing. Even the cardinal woke to sing in the grand old oak outside the window up in the highest branches, and no song ever sounded so sweet to my ears. I am encouraged to wait with each lengthening day for spring to arrive not on the calendar but with a bit of thaw right outside my door to draw me outside to breath in the awakening world,

Until then, I return to the kitchen, tending to my soul as I tend to those I love. I will brew a pot of a favorite herbal tea. I will put something in the slow cooker to warm our senses with the aromas of deeply satisfying savory food and spices which will meld together all day long and creep into every nook and cranny of NOLD by the time night falls. I will turn on the oven to bake an offering to the gods made of flour and sugar, knowing how truly fortunate I am.

For this can only be said by one, who stands warm and secure looking out into the dark as the temperatures drop and the wind begins to howl in the eaves once again. I never understood the layers of meaning within delayed gratification as I understand them right now in the fading light of this winter day.