Somehow, Matt and I managed to produce a child who not only enjoys football but who can sit and watch a game without us, stay interested, and understand what's going on. Were it not for Suzannah, I might have forgotten about the Super Bowl. I've written a couple of blog entries about football but that's because I like the Seahawks, and yes, I suppose I am one of those fans, the not-real ones, because I mostly just don't give the remotest of craps about football but I do love our Seahawks--mostly for reasons that don't even have a lot to do with football, although watching some of them do these amazing things on the field is kind of a beautiful thing. (I learned some stuff--really all I think I strictly need to know about football--from Friday Night Lights.) Anyway, the Seahawks aren't in the Super Bowl this year, so when Suzannah asked me if we were doing some sort of Super Bowl party and received a blank stare in return, her disappointment drove us to the grocery store to procure root beer and Cheetos, which, to my daughter, is apparently a special treat.
So I'm writing this at my dining room table while my children watch football. They've been totally absorbed in the game all by themselves for over an hour and a half now. I don't understand this at all; even when the Seahawks did make it to the Super Bowl, I spent the game cheering when the other people's screams led me to understand I should also be screaming, but mostly I lingered by the snack table and wondered if I could manage to read a few pages of my book if I did it subtly in the corner.
Matt is off running in Dash Point State Park. It is a beautiful, sunny day which is turning into a lovely early evening, with soft light falling across the backyard. Our lawn, after eight weeks of lying fairly dormant, seems to be struggling to grow again, and I know that soon Saturday morning will mean that Matt fires up the mower while I take the kids to gymnastics. I am a girl who loves the winter, who craves the dark and stillness of October, November, December. It might even by my favorite time of year. But what I think I really love is the turning of the seasons. Spring comes early in the Pacific Northwest. Never was I more aware of this than the year my son was born; he arrived during the darkest part of the year, but I spent nearly every day during January and February walking to the park with my children, watching Suzannah play with my new son strapped to my chest. The outside world began to wake up, and I could breathe. Had I spent the first months of my son's life hunkered down in a dark house with two children, I'm certain my post-partum anxiety would have been much, much worse.
February in Washington means the first cherry blossoms, the first outdoor runs in which I wear a short-sleeved t-shirt. In February of 2008 I wrote: The air is sweet with the first breath of spring. I never feel the need to crawl up, crawl out from winter's quiet depths until I smell it, that singing fresh scent under the mud, under the earth and the grass. It's almost painful, that first gasp of sharp sweet air, like a birth, like a death. Every year it's an ache in a way I can't explain. I feel the same thing as spring inches towards summer, as August gives way to September, as the late autumn sun turns into the foggy, still mornings of October. I love the season of Advent. But every year, despite the fact that I was raised to observe the feast of Epiphany which means the Christmas tree stays up into January, I find myself wanting to pack up and put away and move swiftly into the new year. To clean up, to declutter, to breathe. To let the light in.
We spent last weekend in Leavenworth, which is becoming one of our favorite winter traditions. Driving through the snowy mountains to arrive at this delightful village, still dazzled by Christmas lights in the town center, is nothing short of magic. My children love sledding down the hill in the middle of town. I love wandering through the shops, even though there is never anything I care about buying. I love smelling the pastries and the German sausages, I love drinking hot chocolate or hot buttered rum. I love our post-sledding pizza and our children's red cheeks and I love, more than just about anything in the entire world, hunkering down in our modest little hotel room with popcorn and a movie, snuggling with my kiddos in beds I do not have to make. It's a simple vacation, really. We stay in a little hotel, not one of the fancy ones right there in the center of town but a decent one with a little swimming pool and a continental breakfast my kids love (Froot Loops and mini muffins and juice and all the things they don't get at our house!), a five-minute walk from the village. We buy only food and hot drinks. Matt goes skiing or snow-shoeing while the kids and I wander and play. Matt takes the kids sledding yet again while I wander alone and wind up at a coffee shop. We give ourselves breathing space and we come back together. It is incredibly cozy and incredibly restorative, and I have begun to think of this trip as our own way to enjoy winter, real winter with mountains and snow, before we come home and breathe deeply the scent of fresh earth and new grass. I'm ready. For the breath, the shift, the ache as we push up through the darkness. Bring the light.
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