My nose is cold. My hands are colder.
So...this is winter? It seems like it's been so long since I've felt this COLD.
It can go away now.
I want bathing suit season. Coconut lotion. Fresh pineapple slices. Feeling the warmth of the sand radiate through my skin. The satisfactory release when surf washes away a fine mist of sweat. Why is it that I must lose feeling in the tips of my toes in order to appreciate the humid swell in which I thrive?
Target is full of shiny things that make me smile - yellow patent leather, ballet flats, nautical inspired baubles, bohemian flower prints and warm-weather madras shorts. My favorite: a light jacket that reminds me of a boat's sail -- creamy mulled navy canvas with big white rope ties -- perfect for a cool spring night by a campfire, heels buried in the sand, eyes drinking in the starry sky. Spring is a promise.
Winter is death. A freeze. Drying up of plants. Etching of smells and chills. A shutting of windows. A shutting down. A blast of forced heat. Getting shocked on metal objects due to the lack of ions in the air. Dry eyes. Desert throat. Coughing. Supple skin taunt and pasty against frigid wind. I've been in Florida for so long I can't imagine dealing with this for more than a week or two. How do people do it? How do they live without the sun for months on end and not simply retire to a life under a down comforter - giving up work and play just to stay near a normal body temperature? I saw a blue Volvo from Ontario in the parking lot today - on it, a layer of road salt so thick it looked like frost. It sent shivers up my already shivering spine. How brave those people are, or, how thick and hearty they must be inside. How warm and present their lives must be...
I lived in a house with a fireplace a few years back. My roommates and I put up a Christmas tree and hung stockings near it - Norman Rockwell style. We all worked and studied so much I only recall one night of real enjoyment of the wood-burning accoutrement - a light crackling while I was hosting a holiday shindig. It taught me that life is not empty without a fireplace and for that one morning of the year when something American inside of me calls, there's Brighthouse's Yule Log on Demand where someone else's fireplace and holiday music can fill my home. Life would cease in the very way I know it to be without a skyline of palm trees but without a fireplace, I'd have a few less trees to add to my carbon footprint.
I like the crisp freshness of a low 70's day with a nice sea breeze moving the sweet air. I live for those slices of climate paradise. I love the sounds the seagulls make on my morning break and the smell of the salt; the hot whisper that curls my hair. I enjoy a good sweat, the smell of newly cut grass and snoozing to the serenade of tree frogs and cricket leg cellos. I love the sound of the ocean on a warm day, that lulling powerful song that resonates in the most primitive place inside of me, where I, like you, am 75% sea.
Brewing tea to keep my hands and throat warm, I digress...
I want a simple hearty life - like what I imagine those Canadians have deep inside - minus the salty car. For I think, they must have something really good to put up with frozen fingers. For me: tenure at a good college, an office full of books where my students feel comfortable enough to take off their shoes (because I surely won't be wearing mine), a convertible, a hammock in the sand, a hurricane every couple of years (just a mild one, to regulate the seasons and clean the earth), family close, occasional scarf weather, sunny days on which I can grade papers in my backyard full of flowers, butterflies and a real clothesline. I want to fall asleep at night with the windows open and know that I'm serving my niche in this life, that with every word I caress out of myself or others, I am healing someone or encouraging them to heal - giving them a voice line from their heart to the page. I want to grow old and gray guiding women whose thighs have taken over their lives and cuddling men who weren't held enough as children - releasing them from themselves into literary freedom. I want to travel to places where I need a heavy jacket, see the sun reflect on the snow and know that when the landing gear comes out on my plane home, I can peel that jacket off, strip off the socks and watch the ghost crabs scuttle in and out of their burrows at sunset.
I have spent a large part of my life moving around and what I've failed to learn, really learn, from all of that packing and unpacking is that there are some things I can't move away from. A fear of stagnation - of sitting still too long and mold growing on my shoulders - has always dwelled inside of me. As a nomadic child I craved the sound of our wood paneled station wagon being loaded, of canned beans in a campground and our family of three huddled together at a roadside fruit stand buying strawberries in a town where I knew no one. Perhaps from so early on, my little life moved so fast I couldn't keep up. What I have always been afraid of is missing something and as a result, my dreams have been filled with the blurry yellow lines on the highway - a promise that somewhere, somewhere else, things would be perfect.
As an adult, I can say I feel I'm finally coming to terms with the fact that there is no tangible perfection - not in weather or a zip code or in myself. It's a slow process, a heady realization that comes in accepting and celebrating what is here instead of what is not. There will always be days when it's too hot or too cold for my liking, no matter where I live. There will be periods of time I feel like a wild mess - a horde of bees inside me buzzing to be let out and other periods where in the spaces of moments, the petals of a violet blooming at my core.
Tonight as I imagine what snow would look like falling over the Atlantic, I feel a beautiful peace with where I am. I will not miss anything as long as I live with my eyes and heart open. There will be no mountain un-climbed, no path un-hiked, no bear or rosebud un-noticed. It's up to me what I miss - the chances I don't take, the opportunities I pass up, the gifts I don't accept. Above all delights, I want to be an old person with a lot of stories just as now I am a young person with a lot of dreams. To do that, the answer is simple. First, I must be here.
Here - as in: hearing the click-clack of the shopping cart against the floor in Publix at 6:32 on a Tuesday on the 4th of March. Here - as in: practicing a walking meditation where I envision a flower growing behind each step I take. Here - as in: not pondering about yesterday, not worrying about tomorrow, but being present - for all the pleasure and the pain. With it all, I will grow a bigger heart, a stronger body, a more broad and refined taste for the organic sweetness life. That's living to me - being alive inside and having enough depth to let the things that drag me down become as light as dust in comparison.
I have only one goal in 2008 - a goal I feel I will carry with me in every breath I take in life from this point forward and I have a book of the same name, written by Baba Ram Das, to thank for the lesson.
"Be Here Now"
It's taken me 25 years but I'm ready. To be. Here.
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