Although I am a winter apologist1, I still find January difficult. It is a very overcast month here on the shores of the Lake. I also have some unpleasant associations related to leaving for boarding school immediately after Christmas, years and years ago, that I have never managed to entirely shake. Usually, I forget about these shadows until I’ve come apart in a melted pile of emotional goo amidst the minor chaos involved in putting away Christmas things and putting the house back to rights following the holidays.
“Surely you didn’t go back to school on New Year’s Day?” John asked me one year, as I was backtracking to figure out what the heck had caused the mystery tears that particular year.
I showed him my old passport: a stamped departure to go back to boarding school on New Year’s Day. The minute Christmas was over, leaving for school loomed large.
This morning, once again having completely forgotten that this is A Thing for me, I found my skin crawling at the sheer! amount! of stuff! that is in the house as I contemplated (yet again) the living room arrangement, the Christmas tree, and the positioning of our couch and the recliner, trying to puzzle out some way I can get the couch right next to the recliner so I can be physically closer to John in his convalescence. I love my 1940’s English roll arm sofa that was last recovered in the 1970s in an orange and olive green ditzy floral print, but there’s no getting around the fact that it is 72” long, we have three bookcases, and our house is only 1,000 s.f.
This time of year, the walls feel like they are closing in, and my mind craves clear, clean, open space. This time of year, I can almost get on board with something like Pantone’s color of the year, “Cloud Dancer.”
That’d be white,2 my friends.
This time of year, I feel like piling everything we own out in the yard and setting it on fire. I said as much to John early today as I was storming around the living room, making extra work for myself, and inefficiently at that, delaying going out for two yucky errands I needed to take care of today,3 not realizing (yet again) that the real reason I was all skin-crawley and disoriented was the fact that I had decided to put away Christmas stuff this morning. I didn’t figure that out until the middle of the afternoon.
”I need to just remember that I always feel like this in January, like piling everything. we. own. out in the yard and setting it on fire!” I groused.
“And in the other months, too,” he noted, with a grin, in the gentle way that he does when he’s teasing me.
I’m glad he’s feeling okay enough to tease me. And he should be thankful that he’s home convalescing, I suppose.
Because otherwise there’d be a giant bonfire in the yard right now.4
With caveats: not this year. I am giving myself the year off, because cancer.
In defence of Pantone and Cloud Dancer (my fingers first typed “Cloud Cancer,” good grief), it’s a good shade of white. It is what my mom and I call “winter white,” that is, a white that is not pure cold white like a 5,000K LED light bulb, but also isn’t ivory or yellowish. It is the color that my wedding dress was, and the color of a fleece that Columbia used to carry but no longer does; “Chalk,” it was called. It’s the white that looks good on me; ceiling-paint white does not. It’s one of the few actual whites that look very good with both dark wood tones and pale wood tones. It is the color of the rice paper used in shoji screens. This has been Colors With Jenny. Stay tuned for a future episode, “My favorite color is grey, but HGTV has ruined it.”
Neither of which I could finish, as it turns out. Both errands will need to be attended to again and finished off tomorrow.
Not really. Okay, well, maybe a few boxes. As a special treat.
I really enjoy your writing, but I'm glad you didn't start a huge bon fire. I know what you mean by 1000 sq ft...my house is 1200 square ft and there is no room for anything else. Pet Whitsun for me!
I feel this, as much as I love winter. I've been increasingly stir crazy because there's too.much.ice. and I despise winter rain. This is Wisconsin, not London. I spent a good three hours last evening shredding old papers (which, to be honest, should have been done years ago) and it felt very very good.