Bringing Mae Flowers

This month has been unseasonably warm.

Usually by mid-December we’ve had a few snowfalls. Frost coats the car windshields each morning and temperatures drop below freezing until the end of March. But we’ve been enjoying lovely September weather this Christmas.

I didn’t have much experience with the cold growing up.

Living in the Texas coastal plains, where temperatures rarely dropped below 45 degrees, snow and ice were a rarity to be celebrated. Moving to Utah as a teenager quickly stripped winter of it’s wonder. The cold made my eyes and nose run, my hands ache, and my muscles tense from shivering. The short, gray days and long nights sapped my energy leaving me tired and depressed for months on end. I never thought I’d get used to the season.

Now, I realize how much I need it.

Over the last few years I’ve been learning to appreciate winter. I’ve learned to accept the quiet comfort of snow when it muffles the bustle of the outside world, and tells me to slow down. I’ve learned to appreciate the long nights that encourage contemplation. And I’ve learned to admire the fleeting light, and how the late sunrises and early sunsets reflect off the snowcapped mountains. Each year I looked for ways to survive the season, now I find it’s a season I can’t survive without.

Winter is the season of rest.

I’ve always struggled to find balance in work and life. I never feel like I’m doing enough: work, school, business, family, friends, writing—there’s so many things I want to do, and my manic side would convince me I could do it all. Spring and summer would pass in a flurry of activity and anxious energy, until the late season crash brought everything to an abrupt halt. After being diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder I realized that my winter depression was the mirror of my summer sun mania. It was my brain’s attempt at restoring equilibrium to my life. It was my body’s way of telling me that I needed to stop, breathe, and rest.

Where is winter?

December is almost gone, but winter has yet to arrive. The temperature refuses to lower, the snow won’t fall, and even autumn’s leaves refuse to drop. The calendar’s pages keep turning, but the season refuses to change, causing a disconcerting feeling that time no longer exists. I don’t know how long this winterless season will linger, or how long I’ll feel off-balance and out-of-sync. I don’t know where the winter is hiding, but I hope we’ll see her before spring.