on wellness and sunshine

A lot of my life is set firmly upon the idea that I’ve found my home. Maybe I won’t live in this house for my whole life, but this area, this state, this climate and community are the home that I searched for and have rooted myself into deeply. But every February comes along, with its bleakness and hopelessness, like a chest cold you thought was over, only to linger for a couple extra weeks. Winter in Maine is long. It’s long and consistent, a sign of its character. In Colorado, where I grew up, the climate was a fast mover, a fickle friend. The weather was severe, cold, snowy, windy, but sometimes in the middle of winter you’d have a bright sunny day, when you only needed a sweatshirt outside, and any remaining snow is long gone by noon. Maine is more dependable than that. Most of the time February comes along, and you wonder if you’ll ever see the ground again, if it will ever rise above freezing, and if you’ll ever remember why you love this place so much.


I like shoveling snow (and it’s a good thing I do), I like cold weather more than hot, and the beauty of a clear winter day still strikes me, when I wonder if the sky has ever looked more blue. But come the middle of February even that beauty begins to fade, and my eyes search out green wherever they go. Movies or photos of spring or summer seem like chocolate cake or a Cinnabon for a super strict dieter. There, and full of goodness, but almost sinister in their inaccessibility. And come this time of year, my bleak attitude finally arises and I wonder again why I love this place so much, and why I want to stay.

This past weekend I had a bad chest cold. I had a bad chest cold, and while growingly pregnant didn’t have the privilege of good sleep or pharmaceuticals (which I’m not a fan of anyway, but seriously sometimes a girl just needs a bit of NyQuil). I was feeling growingly pouty and perhaps even slightly despondent. Then we had one of those miracles that happen this time of year and restore all sense of rightness and sanity. A truly, truly, sunny day. I sat at the kitchen table, curtains as open as I could get them, drinking hot tea and eating hashbrowns, and pointed my chest toward the sun. The warmth hit my chest and burned it, simmering it, feeling like it melted my pessimism like it melts the layer of ice on the top of all the snowbanks. It warmed my chest enough to make me feel better, my cough getting lighter, my body finally feeling that thing long absent since the fall, warmth. On days like these I begin to remember why I love it here so much. I love it because the first sign of mud, on a sunny day, hidden for months under layers of ice and snow, brings adults the same joy as it did everyone when they were kids and got to play with it. I love it because absence does make the heart grow fonder, and I would never appreciate the spring as much if I lived somewhere I could take it for granted. I love it because it is real. Life can sometimes be difficult, it just can, and getting through those stretches of difficulty, like the endlessness of winter in February in Maine, allows an appreciation and recognition of beauty when it is finished that I would never have without the challenges that came before it.

spring is coming