Seasonal Disorder

Sometime in September, something in the air turns to Fall. Not the temperature yet, and the leaves have only just begun to turn. Still, something has changed. The light, perhaps, or the sound of grasshoppers singing all day. Maybe it’s the heavy morning dew. I know crisper mornings are coming, with the sparkle of frost on grass. I look forward to that. Fall is my favourite time of year.

I’ve given a lot of thought to the anticipation of seasonal change since we started avoiding the season that defines Canada. How, I wonder, does this yearly cycle and its metaphorical significance affect the way we see ourselves and the world? A couple of years ago, I suggested to a Mexican friend that perhaps the cycle of seasons, with their dramatic differences, has created a different sense of self and time in those of us who live in less temperate climates. Not, I think, a very original idea.

Nevertheless, she leapt into defensive mode: “We have seasons too, you know.” 

I hadn’t meant to offend. If seasonal change has a metaphorical significance for me, no doubt it does for her too. But the drama of annual death and rebirth isn’t her metaphor. She doesn’t experience the miraculous appearance of tiny leaves pushing through frozen ground, the frantic rush to grow from seed to flower and back to seed in a few short months, the short days and long nights of winter. Hers must be a gentler rhythm: dry brown hillsides turning green with the coming of summer rains; chilly breezes announcing a frente frio; deciduous trees dropping and re-forming leaves according to a timetable of their own. 

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Although I know I will be gone for the winter, I have piled a small stack of firewood for my cook stove where, on cold days, I like to simmer soup or fry bacon. I light this fire only a few times a year now; what used to be a life style has become nostalgic ritual—during which I usually smoke up the kitchen.

My husband insists—only somewhat in jest—that my nostalgia for winter is evidence of a mental disorder. He is unable to separate winter from discomfort and insists that I have romanticized the season over the decade-plus that we’ve avoided it. Maybe so. Winters in northern Ontario can be long, brutal, dark—and very cold. But for me, it is not about temperature. I am no fan of discomfort. It is about a personal cycle of hibernation and resurgence—a cycle that mirrors nature’s own progression through the seasons and which, for me, feels bred in the bone and defines the passage of time.

As much as I love our Mexican home, Mexico has broken this cycle for me. Just as the time comes to turn inward—when the garden is harvested, the leaves raked, the deck furniture stored away, when the dark comes early, and I have pulled the afghans out of the closet and piled the winter-reading, as heavy as the afghans, beside the sofa—at that moment, I find myself flying over the encroaching winter and landing in a place where it never gets dark before seven and where flowers bloom all winter. Where the streets are filled with pedestrians, music blares from open windows, and vendors hawk their wares in the city’s plazas. This is not a climate conducive to hibernation. 

When bears hibernate, they emerge in the spring cranky, thin, and hungry. That’s not how it is with me. I rarely deprive myself of nourishment in any season. Indeed, I think of winter as a time for nourishing both body and soul, a time for thick soups, quiet reflection, and tea, scones and conversation with friends. Unlike the bears, I emerge energized—and perhaps just a bit plumper. Or, I did.

Of course, as my friend pointed out, there are seasons in Mexico too, subtler than those bred in my bones. Perhaps the time for reflection here is when the heat becomes oppressive, or when the rains pummel the hillsides. I don’t know, because by then I have defied nature again and returned north in time to put away the unused blankets and the un-read books, and to watch my own hill come back to life. Or perhaps the seasonal urge to turn away from the world is a selective one, cultivated over a lifetime by months of necessity, when the weather drives us northerners indoors to seek warmth and comfort. 

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It is mid-March, and I am sitting under the eucalyptus tree, looking at the shadows of cactus on the adobe wall, watching the swallows swoop under an archway to their nest in the corner of the portico. The evening air is cool, a relief from the afternoon’s heat. Yes, there are seasons, and it is spring here, though it feels like mid-summer to me. The air under the eucalyptus tree is filled with butterflies that have emerged from their own quiet times in the cocoon, and I wonder if the bears at home have awakened from their winter’s sleep. If I were there, I would be beginning to stir, to breathe in the exhilaration of spring after the months of cold and dark. Now that it is time to go—fickle person that I am—I am reluctant to leave this sunny place and my eucalyptus tree.

Like a child struggling with the concept of permanence, I long to defy the laws of physics, to be in two places at once.

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It has always amused me that in Mexico, the first day of spring prompts celebrations and parades, small children dressed as bright flowers, butterflies, and bees, confetti on the streets. This celebration of a change that is barely perceptible to me occurs annually, just before I return home to find crocuses poking through the last of the winter’s snow. 

By then, the back of winter is broken. April nights continue to drop below freezing, but the days have lengthened, the sun is higher in the sky, and the mid-day air is soft on the face. The first robin appears, often ahead of the first worm. I throw open the living room windows just for the freshness of it, and enjoy the fact that warm days arrive ahead of black flies and mosquitoes. We can look forward to a month without bugs.

And yet…there are no parades. Children slough off their tired snow suits in favor of windbreakers and mud-suits—but they don’t dress as daffodils. Why, I wonder, do those of us who experience some of the most dramatic seasonal changes on earth allow them to pass without public celebration? 

During these first days home, I capture the tail end of the quiet season, when the earth is coming back to life. I pretend to awaken slowly from a sleep I haven’t taken. I re-settle, reconnect with friends, watch the wet ground gradually absorb the huge puddle in the back yard, and listen to the melt water rush through the ditches from the hill to the river. By mid-May spring has arrived in full force and, like the shrubs and flowers, I feel an irresistible urge to move on with seasonal tasks—re-claiming the perennial bed, poking vegetable seeds into the damp, warm soil, and driving the mower around the absurdly large lawn—all labours of love but harbingers of a season with relentless demands. 

Despite the promise that, this year, summer will be quieter—a more relaxed and reflective time—it will not be so. Children and grandchildren will visit; outdoor projects will demand attention while weather permits; a family wedding will call us out of town for a week. By late August, like the flowers, I will be spent. 

When the hills turn orangey-red and the grasses turn brown, I will prepare again for the quiet season. I will stack wood and pull winter clothes from the back of the closet. I will light several fires and wear my extra-heavy coat once. Maybe I will shovel some snow. Then I will board a plane and fly south, where I will sit in the sun and reminisce about blizzards and frigid air and snug fires—and wonder if I really do have a mental disorder.