Call it seasonal depression,
Or regular depression, or anxiety, or a lack of vitamin D and seratonin,
Or whatever you want to call it—
I tend to feel kind of down in the winter.
So as December came, I looked out for the signs.
But it was Christmas—and most of December
Is barely winter anyway.
And in January, I looked out for the signs.
But I was busy settling into the new year.
And setting goals and finding a planner.
And besides,
It was barely winter anyway.
Now it’s mid-February.
There’s still ice on the ground from an ice storm a week ago.
But it’s mostly thawed now
And there is water everywhere
As patches of ground, one by one,
Begin to light up their no vacancy signs,
And the melted ice has nowhere to go
In that over-saturated ground.
Sam asks when it will snow again
and I tell him I don’t know.
I tell him this might be the last snow of winter.
That the weather may just get warmer and warmer.
And calling it the last snow of winter makes me realize that winter has been here.
It’s not “barely winter” anymore.
Maybe it is, but the other way now.
Winter is almost over.
And I think about that seasonal depression again.
I stopped looking for the warning signs.
I was playing in the snow and ice
And planning
And celebrating
And I ignored the signs of winter
Going on all around me,
Until it began to thaw
And the ground became over-saturated,
And puddles of water appeared
And now they currently have nowhere to go.
So I let them soak more and more into the ground,
Until it’s completely muddy,
And you can’t take a step outside
Without tracking it all in and making a mess.
Because there will be a day soon
When the ground will bear fruit
From taking in all that melted snow.