The sun, isn’t she lovely? Isn’t it soul affirming to walk without a coat, a hat, and gloves, without hunching up your shoulders like a turtle who has been frightened? Isn’t it pleasant not to itch at scratchy sweaters and isn’t it pleasant to feel your ears and nose? Isn’t it sweet to feel the sun caressing us, warm-fingered and bright?

But I'm caught on the thought of Januarys and Februaries and Marches. What about the snow days, the quiet days, the soft sweet days when the neighborhood is tucked under the same white sheet? Sometimes, in my t-shirt, I can hear, echoing, children giggling as they slide on trash bags down the nearest hill. Sometimes, when the sky is too blue, I make myself hot chocolate and burrow into the quilt my grandmother died beneath. Sometimes, when there are birds too early outside my window, I listen to Joni Mitchell and I wish I had a river, I wish I had a river, wish I had a river I could skate away on.

And isn’t it nice, though the days are short, that we may get out of bed as we do? Isn’t it lovely, though the systems and cycles of life are so delicate, that we may have this day, this warm day, isn’t it lovely to feel a breeze rustle our leg hairs? And I call my mother, I say, “This is my best winter, I haven’t been to the therapist in months. This is my strongest winter, I haven’t spent a single day in bed.”

Sometimes I can hear, echoing, the sliding of glaciers, can feel the tide rise against my warm ankles. Sometimes, in January, I encounter a fuzzy bud of a plant flowering before its time. I stop in my path. I cup my hands around the nascent blossom and swear to stand there until April, to protect with my body what my reusable grocery bags cannot. Still in a few hours my resolution tires, and though I know there will be a frost, perhaps a deep frost, I resign to tucking my own body in instead of hers. And the whole world glimmers, radiates, then freezes over.

On the warm days I meet my friends on front porches. We giggle and drink white wine that reminds us of fruit and neighborhood cats come to greet us, there are deer in the back yard. I try my best to notice the sun and soak her in because the world is so cold and we are so scared. The gardens that we were promised as children are dying and we’re scared we might too. We are wrapping our arms around the sky because this may be the day, or tomorrow might, or yesterday might have been, that it is our last stretch and pull towards a better world. There’s so much to do, there’s too much to do, and I can feed my friends whether the weather is cold or warm. It’s getting too dark too early anyways. Maybe next winter I will build us a snow fort in which we can grown a thing that is safe.