I think many people find winter to be their least favorite season.
It’s cold and it’s wet. Mostly it’s dark. Sometimes there’s ice that makes walking to your car an epic adventure let alone actually driving the thing. Shovelling snow is wretched. The vegetation in the grocery store came a long, long way from a much warmer place before you ever got ahold of it.
I get it. Really, I do.
I even sympathize and agree about the cold, wet, and dark part. Though, I have been blessedly exempted from having to endure it for one more year.
But for me, winter is very special.
Not for the weather or the light, but because…that’s when my husband is home and we get our reward for all the summer’s hard work.
I know there are many fishing wives who are not as lucky as me and have husbands who are gone for many seasons. Maybe one day Nic will go fishing for other things besides salmon, but for now, I’ll enjoy my luck.
I’ll enjoy drifting through slow sleepy days, typing away at my desk and knowing that he’s rarely more than a few rooms away. I have only to get up and walk out into our garden where the daffodils are already starting to poke their green shoots up above the dark earth to find him tinkering away on something. Or maybe he’ll wander in and lead me out to see the hole he’s been digging or the branches he’s trimmed back, so more of the winter sunlight can fall onto my rose bushes.
People always ask me how I can bear to let him go to sea and leave me behind.
This is how.
I can because when the summer’s over, I get months of breakfasts and lunches and grocery shopping trips in the middle of the day when everyone else is working. I get all the date nights that we skipped in summer paid back to me in full with interest in the form of elaborate, homemade baked goods. I get to look up from my work to find that he’s popped into my office for the 25th time today, paused on the threshold to say “Oh, you’re working. I wasn’t supposed to bother you, was I?” before sauntering in anyway and making himself comfortable on the chair next to my desk to chat to me for a while.
After all, it’s winter.
Winter isn’t for work.
Winter is for resting.
The bears know what’s up.
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Of course, as you can see in my pictures, it’s not quite cold enough for hibernation in the part of California where we’re wintering 😉
I guess I’m at the farthest extreme of mild winters this year, with bougainvillea out my window and needing to use the AC. I guess we weren’t meant to hibernate quite as much as the bears, but it’s nice to have slower kinds of work and more down time. Winters in our part of California are the best!
We’re really enjoying them. My tulips are about to bloom!
So glad you get the best of both worlds, plus time with your lovely and loving husband. Love, Amma and Adaddy
Love you too, Amma!
So grateful your resting spot is near us. We will enjoy you while you rest here, too. 🙂 <3
Heehee! We’re very happy to be here 🙂