It’s January 8, 2021. Today is my eldest son’s birthday! It is a day that I will always remember being it was the day I became a mother for the first time. I was just a kid when I had him and didn’t really have a clue as to what I was doing. He taught me so many things, as did the rest of my children as they came along within 5 years of his birth. What a busy time! I think I felt that I was inside a whirlwind or tornado that eventually spit me out about 23 years later when my youngest went off to University.

This year and this past year will be so different than other years. We have not traveled in just about 1 year as of 17 January. It’s the first time we have not had a scheduled flight. One of the reasons I am missing it so much is that it keeps me from seeing loved ones. We don’t all live within driving distance, both of my son’s live far away (one in another country).

One thing this not traveling gives me is a sense of hibernation, or wintering as other writers have expressed. Since I live high up in the Colorado Mountains, I am also given a sense of this every time I look outside my window. Snow covered houses, snowy roads, river and the shorter days are all whispering “it’s winter, stay warm! Sleep later!, be kind to yourself, drink tea and Glühwein, make soup”. Also being outside is a big part of who I am. I get a lot of my energy from clean air, mountain scenery, and feel connected to my environment.

With the crazy violent terrible happenings in the US right now, my feeling of needing “to flee” is heightened and I feel disturbed inside by reactions of the people on social media. Some that I worked with a few years ago are on the side of what I see as very evil, spouting evilness and lies. I can’t believe they think this is all free speech! What happened to common sense that my parents instilled inside my very being? Love your neighbor as yourself? These people who were storming the Capitol were not loving their neighbors. They were only for themselves.

The only hope I can take away from all this is that it might be a turning point for people to see what is really someone’s character. In the weeks ahead we here in the US will see history unraveling and the rest of the world will watch with amazement. What’s going to happen next?

A quote from Katherine May from her book Wintering:

“We have seasons when we flourish and seasons when the leaves fall from us, revealing our bare bones. Given time, they grow again.”