Winter Day Ponderings

The cold weather has finally made it here. After enjoying sunshine and blue skies while the rest of Europe was covered in snow and ice, we finally woke up to grey skies and rain this week. We have such a short winter here in the central Mediterranean that when it finally comes, I really love and enjoy it. Pelting rain and strong howling winds are common when winter finally sets in. The house we live in overlooks a valley and when the wind is blowing from the back of our house, which is totally unprotected, we can hear it rattling the window frames and wreaking havoc with our plants. But I enjoy it. I think of it as the voice of winter. For all the seasons have a voice and so do the different winds. Our winds actually have different names and when the mighty northern winds blow you can rest assured that the weather will cool and the icy fingertips of the wind will find their way inside your clothes, chilling your skin and giving you an over all tingling feeling.

As I am writing this I realise that the coldest part of our winter is still before us but I know that Spring will follow - because the seasons are a cycle and, in truth, even our lives go through different seasons. In a way they parallel each other. Except that there is never a spring after our winter. Or not in this world. It is a bitter pill to swallow and one which I always have a hard time wrapping my thoughts around. But while we live, we hope. And we dream.

My dream for 2009 was to write. For six months I wrote and wrote but when summer came (and my brain was all drowsy with the intense heat) it dawned on me that I was spending time writing but away from my son. In all honesty, I was there physically but my brain would be miles away and I felt that I was missing out on some of my little one’s most important years. It is true that writing is something I enjoy and we should not give up our dreams when we have children, but I could not ignore the fact that, after a day at work and away from him, I could not just zone out and write and not play with him. So now all the writing I do is for my blogs. Hopefully all the vestigial stories that I have jotted down on notebooks and scraps of paper will one day be given life. I know that many might argue that life will not wait for me and that we should seize the moment. But then, neither will our children wait. They grow up way too fast and before we know it they are off to follow their own dreams. Right now I feel it is more important to plant future dreams in my little boy than it is to follow mine. After all, as long as I have some sort of outlet through my blogs, it is enough.