The year begins knee-deep in snow. Our backs are aching from twisting to push the snow off the winding staircase. The sun hardly rises high enough to warm us up. The only signs of life are the pale, anemic sky, the raspy cawing of crows, and the wispy rattling of frozen branches.
We can hardly wait for spring, but after a few light days of melting bliss, we are neck-deep in maddening rain and mud and muck. One wait over, we wait again,this time for the first tender leaves to restore colour of life to our eyes.
We breathe relief when good weather catches up. This is our treatment for three seasons of misery: a three-month, summer-long sauna. Under the dark green canopies of small streets, or in the open air tanning salons of parks and playgrounds, the weight of clothing is lifted. In summer we turn into lizards, basking in the sun to restore life to our cold bones and slowed-down blood.
Follows unending fall. Warm and cool days alternate, the cold slowly prevailing over the warm. And one morning we are surprised though we expected it: instead of drizzle in a somber sky the world is a magical white spiral of flurries. Then a heavier snowfall, and another, until winter descends upon us again, a frozen, numbing weight.
Our first seasons, in our youth, seem to last forever and ever. The older we grow, the faster they go; the seasons become a frame against which events of our life are set off, and soon we only notice their passing in hindsight, the frenzied cycle of years echoing like a theme with endless variations.
