When Winter Comes

For most of us, gardening is an endeavor pursued in the warmer months of the year. Traditional sowing and growing seasons in many parts of the country usually run from early March to late September, and during this time gardens flourish with fruits, vegetables and blossoms many times over until temperatures begin to drop.

Although there is nowhere else I'd rather be on a warm afternoon than working in my garden, as seasons go, I've always been partial to winter. Consequently, as summer comes to an end each year and autumn fades the leaves on the trees to a rusty hue, my spirit loosens up a bit as I fill my flower pots and my flower beds with variegated petunias and hearty chrysanthemums to reflect the change in seasons. By the time the first snow flakes drift and icicles erupt from the eaves of the house, I'm ready for winter. 

Wintertime is a dark season; cold, callous, expressionless, and oftentimes shrewd in its attempt to exert total control over every single thing it comes in contact with. Even so, to skip winter is to omit an essential part of the growing process. For as temperatures drop and the ground freezes over, significant changes begin to take place. Weeds die back, certain bugs are vanquished, and decomposed leaves rest in piles, waiting to be utilized as mulch. For a short period of time, the promise of renewal and new growth are suspended in the air. Thus, changes that occur during the winter are as essential to a garden as those which take place in the warmer months. We can't skip winter. However, as planters and cultivators, we can grow to appreciate its contributions to our gardens.

The Princess and The Storyteller

Each year for as long as I can remember, my uncle has called me on my birthday. The phone usually rings no later than 4:00 a.m. and if I'm awake, it takes me a minute or two to realize who is calling and why. Now, before you commence thinking unpleasant thoughts about my uncle and his inability to call at what most people would deem a decent time of day, let me tell you the rest of the story.

The birthday phone call is a tradition, rooted in a simpler way of life and the need to communicate and share news with family. You see, I was born while my uncle, the youngest of four children, was attending junior high school. My mom, who is his sister, and my dad were living out of state at the time, and my grandparents did not yet have a phone. So, my parents called the school my uncle attended and asked the principal to give him the message I had been born. When he went home that afternoon, he made the announcement to my grandparents.

Over the years, the story rarely changes, even though I continue to mature, as does my uncle. I am a princess, born in another land to a happy queen and king. My uncle is the smart, handsome storyteller who must inform my grandparents and the rest of the realm that a girl child has been brought forth, the first in a long line of grandchildren. It is a common tale to be sure, but salient nonetheless.

In the end, however, the story does not matter near as much as the telephone call itself. My uncle and I share a special  connection that has grown over the course of our lives, and I would not trade his birthday call for anything; not a text message, not an email, not a card. Instead, I am content to hear his voice on the other end of the phone each year, waking me from my drooling slumber, to remind me I am another year older, but more importantly, that I am loved.

The Tall and Short Of It

My sister and I were always close. I am older by approximately two years, so the majority of our formative years were spent hanging out together, doing the things we loved to do. In the summer, we went swimming and boating in the lake that rested at the bottom of a huge hill in our neighborhood, accessed via a cul-de-sac at the end of our street. When winter came, that same lake would freeze over and become as shiny as a piece of glass. We'd fly to the bottom of the hill on our toboggan, lace up our ice skates, and glide back and forth on the ice until our feet became numb.

Gymnastics were extremely popular when we were growing up, so we pestered my dad until he finally made us a balance beam out of metal scraps, and attached a horizontal swing bar to our existing swing set. Many happy hours were spent trying to perfect our hanging back flips and dismounts. We competed against each other in footraces and Pong, read books, played with dolls and toy cars, listened to eight-track tapes and records, ate Slim Jim meat sticks, went regularly to the roller rink and the movies, and picked beetles off of my dad's fruit trees for a penny a pop. By the time we were in elementary school, we had formed a lip sync band with our neighbor's daughter, and no Bob Seger or Elvis song was safe.  

Long car rides to my grandparents' house were used to hone our singing skills (I was Linda Ronstadt and she was Olivia Newton John, even though we both had brown hair). After we arrived, we usually played tag or hide-and-seek, and oftentimes ate sour grass, unwashed, out of the front yard. Once the sun set, we trapped lightening bugs in little glass jars, and looked at the moon through a telescope I'd received one year as a gift for my birthday or Christmas, I don't recall which.

My sister would have been fifty-three this month; she passed away in 1994. As I write this blog, I am surrounded by pictures of us when we were kids, and I can't help but smile as I remember her spontaneity, her quirkiness. In many of the pictures, we are dressed identically, standing side by side, me just a few inches taller than she. I was the older sister, born first, bigger, and biologically more mature. She, although short in stature, was the underpinning in our relationship, tranquil in nature when compared to my overanxious state of being, never taking anything, herself included, too seriously. We were sisters by default, but friends by choice. I taught her to read and gave her the chicken pox. She taught me how to relax and enjoy life. As December continues to ebb and flow, I miss her. That being said, I know if she were here, she'd tell me not to lollygag, not to sulk, but to get on with it. And that is what I plan to do.    

 

Logically Speaking

I am bad at math. In fact, to say that I am challenged in this discipline may be an understatement, a minimization of the true nature of all things related to the relationship I have with numbers. Nonetheless, it is a reality I've dealt with most of my life. To clarify, it is not for lack of trying that my math skills have not developed as they should. Indeed, quite the opposite is true. When I think about it, I've probably devoted more time and effort trying to understand word problems, equations, number lines, and fractions than most. For example, when I was in elementary school, I was kept inside during many a recess to work on practice math problems while my classmates enjoyed the playground. In high school, I never advanced past the math courses required for graduation, despite the extra studying. And while attending college, I was required to enroll in remedial math classes before signing up for additional courses. These days, as an adult, I still struggle with all but the most basic of math operations.

For many years, my inability to advance past an elementary understanding of all things mathematical haunted and embarrassed me, and I found it difficult to reconcile myself to the possibility that I did not possess a sense of logic one requires to successfully understand or solve math problems. There were many days I felt  illogical in other areas of my life as well. Moreover, I could not understand how all of the time and effort I had invested over the years to improve my skills, as well as the endless hours of instruction provided by my parents, teachers, and friends, had left me a below-average mathematician.   

After much self-reflection, however, I've come to realize my ineptitude in math has actually increased my capacity for the creative. In many situations, I find I am quite creative and logical in my approaches to problem solving, although I cannot tell you how or why this happens. For instance, when I garden, crochet a blanket, write an essay, read and analyze a section of text, or decipher a song lyric, I use logic and I problem solve. I just do so in a different way, a way that works for me. And while I will never stop trying to improve my math skills, I refuse to be defined by how well I know my multiplication tables, or how swiftly I can convert an improper fraction to a mixed fraction. Logically speaking, two plus two will always equal four, and the creative, logical part of me is okay with that. Just don't ask me to explain how I arrived at my answer.