The whole winter thing.

It's cold out there.  And windy.  Makes me want to pull the couch up in front of the wood stove and cuddle up with a cup of hot chocolate.  Or chocolate and a beer, whatever.

There is something just so delicious about being inside and cozy-warm while it snows and blows outside.  It reminds me of when it would snow at night when I was younger and I would stand by the window and turn out the lights and watch it snow for what seemed like forever.  Snow was so rare in White Rock.  When it snowed, it had my full attention.


I didn't grow up with much.  We had each other and that was about it.  My Mom raised us on her own and money was always tight, so I've always appreciated having a roof over my head and food on the table.  When I would go downtown Vancouver in the winter with my Mom when I was a kid, we would see a lot of people living on the streets and I recognized how fortunate we were to have a home to go to.  I still think about that now, especially when it's this cold and snowy out.  Someone's baby is out there, right now, cold.


I've had our wood stove going all day and I'll keep it going all night.  And all day tomorrow, I expect, and on and on.  Yesterday I baked bread and today I made hot chocolate with real cocoa.  Yup, I'm fully invested in the whole winter thing.

It's funny that feeling cozy is so tied to things being far from cozy beyond my door.  I mean, it makes sense; I'm not exactly eating big bowls of hot soup and snuggling under a thick blanket in the middle of summer.  But as much as I love the summer (and I do), my memories of winter and those cozy feelings associated with cold weather take me back to moments of my childhood in an instant, the way a smell can transport me to a memory in a sniff.


I'm looking forward to getting out, hopefully tomorrow to watch Sonja play in the snow.  It was just too windy this afternoon, and she wasn't too interested in going to the park in the strong wind (and neither was I).  Somehow she already knows that staying inside where it's cozy and warm is where it's at.  Time to play will come.

Winter 2008.