Winter

the REST of the week #98

It’s the rest of the week and the end of winter (for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere).

Our dead Christmas tree.

I’ve been postponing this post for the past 3 months—perhaps because I wanted to test my feelings about winter and make sure I wasn’t in some fleeting state of infatuation.

It wasn’t infatuation. I realize that I really do have a deep appreciation for winter.

When the trees surrounding our house drop their leaves in the fall, light floods into the front room, free to enter for the absence of all that foliage. I sit on the floor with my back against the wall and watch the patch of light make it way across the floor as we turn towards the sun. Gazing across the street, where the ground falls and then rises again behind the neighbor’s homes, I feel myself drawn to the naked trees, stark and uncomplicated against the sky.

You know the calm you feel when you observe a baby sleeping peacefully? That rise and fall of the chest and rosy color of life on the cheeks?

That’s how I feel when I observe the winter trees.

There is no covering up the scars, the tangles, the broken branches. Everything is laid bare—so much so, that the web of twigs on sticks on branches that push out from their trunks look almost like a mass of roots—as if the tree might have taken a dive down into the earth and, upside-down, the roots reach for the sky.

There is an unpretentious honesty and a calm kindness in those winter trees that invites me to sit down in my own soul and rest.

During our time in Michigan, I went through a phase where I simply refused to have a fake Christmas tree (this ended when the prices of live trees went up in 2018). I did not mind having to water it and clean up the needle droppings as long as we had the real thing with the real scent.

When it came time to take down the tree, I couldn’t bear to throw it out—it still looked so alive. So, I wrapped it in a sheet and carefully dragged it to the back yard and propped it up between some young maple trees that had enough scratchy, low hanging branches to keep the tree upright.

The cold weather preserved it so that it looked like we had a little evergreen growing in the backyard— live tree surrounded by a community of lifeless trees.

But the irony is that it was just the opposite. The naked trees were merely taking their winter siesta, going deep inside themselves, conserving their energy and preparing for new growth in spring.

Those trees were resting.

As we inched towards spring and the weather warmed up, that Christmas tree turned a rusty brown and then a burnt orange color, its needles  brittle with dangerously spikey tips.

Meanwhile, the maples and their neighbors pushed out a fuzzy yellowi-green haze resembling the beginnings of adolescent facial hair—growth and new life.

Maybe it’s the season of life I’m in—this desire for a minimalistic and quiet environment.

But as spring explodes with flowering trees lining the road like a parade of debutants in billowing gowns of pale pink, crimson, magenta, and wedding dress white, I feel the hope and joy and glory of new life. I also appreciate the warmth.

I guess I’m ready for spring, another season of blossoming and growth. But I also realize that there will be moments I miss winter, so I am thinking of ways to retreat now and then to that season of rest.

Maybe sitting in the dark after the world has gone to sleep, or before it wakes up?

Do you have any ideas?

May your rest be sweet,

Alicia