“In the depths of winter

I finally learned that there was in me

an invincible summer.”

~ Albert Camus.

 

I’m ready for winter to be over.

We haven’t had much snow. I’d welcome the snow. Playing in the snow makes the long cold stretches bearable.

It’s the endless cold and grey that gets me. Those days where the cold soaks all the way to your bones and you just ache from it. The lump in your throat, like ice, that just begs to be melted. But you keep on going.

You keep on, because summer is still in you.

There is that small spark in you that remembers lemonade and fireflies. All of the fresh cut grass, sunburned shoulders and sweat-drenched days are still in there.

Underneath your frozen skin and between your tired bones is that first warm day where you get to have bare skin and sunshine on your face. Where you dance, barefoot, in the yard for no reason at all. Where you find that your smile has crept back up where it belongs and maybe–you might even start to whistle.

There is that tiny speck that can conjure up the sensation of warm wind on bare skin and the smell of lilacs in the air. If you close your eyes you can still feel it.

And you know, you know, that winter won’t last forever.

It’s coming.

That day is coming.

Even in your frosty-breathed, sad-eyed mornings, you haven’t forgotten that the sun will come back.

It starts as spring. But spring is just a tease and a promise. Spring is “I’ll melt you just enough so you remember what summer feels like.” If spring is a sip, summer is thirstily gulping down that drink you’ve needed so badly.

You’ll wake up one day and find it too warm and too wonderful to not let your heart melt completely. The sun will be in your eyes and you will laugh, and laugh and laugh until you can’t take it anymore. You will fall down and lay in the grass and look at the clouds, gasping for breath, smiling with your entire body. That gorgeous May day when summer is so close you can touch it, you will remember, finally. The harshest winter can’t extinguish the fire under your skin.

You are invincible.