The Discontent of Our Winter

For Christmas, I received a “Gothic Literature” wall calendar. Standing in front of it late last week I thought, “Phew, at least January is half over already.”

I struggle with winter. I know I’m not alone, but no matter how many strong we stand, to me winter always feels like an acutely personal attack. I can hardly sit still. I itch to go outside, but when I do the cold air tenses up my muscles, stings my face and lungs, and alienates my fingers and my toes. So I rush right back indoors. The sky is the same color as the ground. It’s not exactly grey, but looks more like someone simply erased it. It feels as though the sky puts the full weight of its emptiness right on my shoulders.  In the winter I’m resigned to the supermarket for fresh produce rather than my own garden. My socks and pants are always wet from the snow. My floors have salt stains on them. Driving conditions are miserable. Traffic is worse. Everything is inconvenient. And I miss the sunshine.

Every year, I cope in various ways. I look at property for sale in the south. I track the sunset times through daylight savings time, though it does little good when it’s overcast. And this year, I simply started counting down the days until the spring.

And then it hit me: I am willing half of my life away.

I’m not exactly not living in the moment. I mean, it’s not as though July rolls around and I start daydreaming of building snow men, or hunkering down with a cup of tea. To be fair, these things never appeal to me. I am experiencing January in all its full winter-ness. I am present and I am engaged.  I’m shoveling sidewalks, and navigating around snow drifts. I just, you know, hate it.  So, I anxiously await more temperate activities.

But I’m thinking that’s no good. It’s not enough to experience all of my life while hating half of it, and resentfully tolerating the other half of it. I want to enjoy my life…all of it. So I need to find a solution.

Since my job, and other responsibilities prevent me from running away to the south of France every January, I've composed a list of things I've been meaning to learn and do that I wouldn't want to waste a lovely day on.

At the top of my list: Paint the Downstairs Bathroom.

 It’s dirty and ugly. It’s a tight little space with a lot of small corners and obstructed walls. It has more horrible dropped ceilings, tangerine walls, duck egg blue curtains, and brown wainscoting. I've been avoiding starting this project. But then again, January is already half over, and there is no way I’m doing this in May. So here goes nothing.

Back on with the purple, plastic gloves to sand, prime and paint the wainscoting. 

At the moment it's sort of a tangerine dream, cream-cicle looking mess, but hey, its a start. And more importantly, I enjoyed it. 

So, I bought a house...this house, actually:



It's beautiful. It's bigger and prettier than my husband and I ever thought we'd be able to afford. And we can afford it, because we have agreed to make some sacrifices.

The first sacrifice we made was to move 65 miles away from our home, our jobs, our friends and all manner of food, live music, art and culture readily available in the city of Chicago. We weighed these losses against the grinding frustration we noticed was solidifying into a core element in each of our personalities. After a combined 30 years in the city, we stopped seeing homeless people. We screamed obscenities at fellow motorists with alarming ease every time the rubber of our tires met the city streets. We accepted front end damage from gaping pot holes, and paid bogus parking tickets we didn't have the time or the energy to fight. So when faced with the decision to give up city life for the quiet and easy, if prosaic, way of life in the country, our choice wasn't easy, but it was clear.

 The second sacrifice we made was to move into a house that was in desperate need of some elbow grease. We knew on the first walk through we would be taking on some projects. Having sat empty for two years, the house was dirty - a filmy sort of dirty that included layers of dust, old cobwebs, food and grease from the previous owners, and lots of poor, dead insects. It needed to be cleaned badly. It also needed repairs to the roof, the porches' steps, the kitchen, and the ceilings.

We walked through it a second time, then met my parents for a cup of coffee. We all agreed, it would take a lot of work and a lot of time, but we could do most of the repairs ourselves. Finally, my husband and I agreed to rent out our home in Chicago. If we hated country life, we could move home. And with that the deal was done.

So we moved.

And immediately got to work. On a whim we began to rip out the horrible acoustic drop ceiling tiles.

Only to find another layer of dropped ceiling tiles.

Project No. 1, and we were already getting discouraged. Chris and I looked at each other long and hard and asked, "What have gotten ourselves into?"

We finished pulling the first layer of ceiling out and went to bed, leaving the second layer in place. And we walked under them refusing to look up for a week.

But in that week, something else happened. We began to explore our new home and town.

I made a point to have my coffee on one of our porches every morning. I sat out there to read and to drink wine in the evenings. Then, I made a neighborhood friend.

Coming home one evening, I saw another new friend clinging to my screen door.

It began to sink in, this is county living. Its slow so that you can enjoy it. So the house is a mess. We knew it would be. We are here to enjoy the changes. We aren't just here to restore this house. We are here to restore ourselves, and to learn to enjoy the process.

So I put my overalls on and got to work.

We ripped all those lousy tiles out and primed the brown wainscoting. Sadly, we did have to hire someone to frame and install a new, drywall ceiling. Fortunately the carpenter, Jason Klaske, was an amazing tradesman who along with his son installed a beautifully level ceiling in a room that leans.

More paint, and viola! Our first finished room.

We have a long way to go, in both the construction of our home, and on our journey to slow down and enjoy the simple life. But it is very encouraging to have completed the first step. 

Now, on this the coldest day of the year, I can sit in my one pretty room and look at the icicles as they form from the side of my roof. 

Pretty.