I Should Have Been a Bear

It is starting to get cold in Stockholm. I can see my breath in the morning. The days are still mostly warm but the nights and the mornings are getting cool. Yep, it is for real. I am really looking down the barrel of...winter.

Just the word summons dread. I despise winter. I try to embrace some poetic version of the seasons changing and all the imagery that goes with it. Having spent 24 hellish, bitterly cold and grey winters in upstate New York I have engineered my life around, not only rain, but winter. Real winter. Coats. Boots. Hats. All of it. And I have to say, I don't miss it at all. Not one iota.

And even if I do have small lapses in judgment (which I am prone to having) and think I am starting to miss it, I have a house in Colorado. I can drive seven hours to winter. Put on the hats, the gloves, the coats, drink the hot cocoa, do a little sleigh riding and then hop in my car and put winter away. In it's rightful place. The recesses of my memory.

Ocourse, I am telling myself this winter will be different. I will dress for it. I will enjoy it. It is after all, only one winter. I can do this. I can wear boots. I like boots. I never get the chance to wear boots in Arizona. My kids can ski, play ice hockey, ice skate and whatever other activities people engage in cold weather. All activities, lord knows, they will never have the opportunity to do with me around. I can do this...