Winter is never going to end…

In October everyone is excited to pull out the jackets and hoodies.  They start talking about bonfires and Halloween.  Then it’s the holiday season with turkey and a red suited fat man.  Everyone wants a white Christmas.  They complain if there isn’t snow.  They love the winter and all it brings.  The snowmen, and the ice skating, the snow ball fights and the angels.  The warm toasty fires and nights spent at home celebrating with family. 

Not me.  I hate winter.  I don’t say that lightly.  I Hate winter, which a capital H! 

I see the leaves on the trees begin to change and I get sad.  I mean actually sad, on the inside.  Then they fall to the ground in heaps and piles, which I have to rake and bag and cart away by the truck load.  The garden freezes over and the sweet potatoes are dug up.  That is the last of the fresh produce I will get for months and months.  The grass and then the windows on the car begin to frost over in the mornings, which means I will have to go out to start it early to warm up. The snow and the ice arrive with a vengeance in Ohio and it stays and stays. 

The days are dark and grey.  The nights are blustery and cold.  The wind is brutal.  It weasels its way under coats and sweaters and bites at the skin.  Eyes water and noses run and the winter is still ever present.  It’s January and the snow comes in droves of white.  Ice crusts over everything including power lines and walkways.  I have been in boots for months.  I miss my pretty peep-toe heels, my wedges and my espadrilles, even my flip-flops. Everything is dead, brown and grey. 

February has arrived and the ice has taken me as a casualty time and time again as I slip, slide, and fall my way through the days and days of winter.  My skin is itchy and dry no matter how much moisture I rub into it.  Snow comes again and again and again.  It’s pushed into piles as high as the house and some higher than that.  Salt granules find there way inside my shoes and my car and my home.  Everywhere I turn I find the sharp little crystals from hell as they stab into my cold feet and toes. 

March is almost here.  There is a light at the end of the tunnel, but I don’t see it yet.  I’m melancholy today with the cold and the winter that is never going to let go of us.  I need the warmth of the sun.  I miss it terribly. 

Come on spring, where are you?