January 2015 - A Wooden Heart

In the flush of a Maine summer I often wonder, how did I endure January? Just as I wonder now, with two half-grown children, how I endured the diapers and sleepless nights of their babyhood. Or the raw and loveless years of my early 20s. I promise myself every summer that when midwinter comes, I will finally unlock the secret to surviving it – to surviving difficulty in general. And then bring that lesson into the rest of the year.

 Although the solstice passed nearly a month ago, this is my lowest point. The cheer of the holidays are a thin echo, the thermometer sits at 10 below, and I wade through the huge evaluation reports I must write at the close of each year. Like many other folks, I face a dead pine tree, several extra pounds on my belly, and a gift-swollen credit card bill. It’s time to cut back and pay up.

But even a wooden heart is a buoyant one. Unless we’re broken, we tend to float upward. The secret to surviving January is that the scale shifts, so that the sunny day we would have overlooked in May becomes a source of great joy when it sparkles on snow.  In January a friend’s hug feels warmer, and coffee feels better going down. Our emotions bounce up and down within their usual range, but the highs are triggered by smaller things. Hard times seem terrible in retrospect, using one’s current scale for reference, but in the moment they had their bright spots.

Do your worst, January. You’ve only got 2 weeks left.