Ann Rennie
And so we are still in winter, just; the season of mittens and beanies, good thick socks and an extra layer or two of clothing; the season of unfurled umbrellas dancing dangerously as commuters hurry to trains and trams and the wet fug of blazer becomes the scent of the season.
We seek the warmth and light of home, to snuggle in, to block out the wind and rain, to hunker down for a few brief hours. Winter and her meteorological mood swings; the arctic kisses, the cold shoulder, the glacial smile, the spectral pall of grey as clouds scowl and dimmed streams of sunlight leak through the sky.
In the morning, men in black stare out into the weather. A bleak overture, the grey blue notes of wind whistle in subways and car parks, sending papers fluttering like small, doomed kites.
A collective shiver ripples through the passengers as they await the 7.11 to Flinders Street via the City Loop. School students stare into their phones. Office workers who left home gleaming find their lustrous locks have been frizzed into odd topiary shapes. I am tea-cosy warm, unfashionable, anonymous, looking up and about, watching the weather.
Winter is the time for thinking and planning, not doing much, idling gently. It is a time for reverie and gentle ruminating, weighing things up. It is for sitting and reading or cosying in with a cup of tea and sorting out the photos of a lifetime, wondering now who that person was on a Greek island almost half a century ago.
Winter is for the sentimental journeys of memory and nostalgia, not for wallowing in but for the gratitude that they happened. It is the small joy of hot soup, warm hands and a winter bonfire. For me, it’s the fairy lights on my balcony that lend a little festivity to the evening gloom.
Sometimes this prolonged period of enduring is hard, a winter wasteland where we have to rely on our inner fortitude to keep going, to persevere in the face of the weather and our own slough of despond. We have to find the grit and grace that makes each day separate and remarkable, even if it is dull and cheerless. It moves us to be kind, to brighten someone’s day with a smile, an acknowledgement, the exchange of pleasantries.
Winter is a season for lingering, for leaning in and listening to the resting heart. Since the winter solstice, the days have grown longer. The season turns and soon soft-sprung spring will usher in new buds and blooms. Winter has completed its invisible, interior, underground work.
We begin again.
Ann Rennie is a Melbourne writer.
