‘Tis the season. Winter. Even in California we notice its presence, although for those of us who come from cold northern climates, it may take a few years after moving out here to realize that it is, in fact, winter. When I was growing up in Wisconsin, winter, which started in October, officially arrived when the first skating rinks were created anew by flooding parts of the playing fields of all schoolyards and parks. All the rinks were outside. Having indoor rinks is like carrying sand to the beach. You can do it, but why?

Although winter is cold, its real sickle stroke is the dark. It makes one huddle into oneself when the sun goes down at four in the afternoon. But every skating rink had big flood lights and no one really noticed it was dark, that is unless you were the last to leave the rink. Then it was your job to turn out the lights when you left. The rink I usually inhabited was a particularly long way from the street, so you really noticed how dark it was, walking up to those street lights, so no one wanted to be the last one to leave.

But one time in fifth grade, the insanity that sets in during winter hit some sort of personal peak, the particular “I am invincible” insanity that precedes the suicidal ideation insanity of late February, the realization that you are not invincible. On that late afternoon it was pitch black, no moon, everyone else had gone home for dinner and I was the last to leave the rink. It was freezing, even for Wisconsin. I had stayed past when I should have to practice this one skating maneuver I was having trouble with. My toes were beyond numb and I was too cold to take off my skates and put on my boots, so I put my rubber skate guards on, turned out the rink lights, and rode my bike home. Bike in winter with snow? With skates still on? I told you this was insanity!

It was also stupid, and hellishly difficult, of which I was well aware, but I wouldn’t stop to do the obvious-change into my boots. Plus, the trip home was several blocks, uphill the whole way. I got to the house just below ours on the hill. I just knew I wasn’t going to make it. I had no more energy. Very dramatically, even for a 10 year old, I let my bike fall over to the side, with me still on it, to land in a snow bank. In some perverse way it was a grandly satisfying gesture. There I was, still on my bike, both on our sides, the bike and I, sort of like still being on a horse that just died under you. I lay there knowing I, too, was going to die, there in sight of my house with the big front window pouring light out over the snow. I thought about how warm it would be inside, how my family would be bustling around in all the before dinner activities and conversations. I was still in the time corridor in which no one would be worried about where I was, so no one would be out looking for me yet.

So there I lay, certain I was going to die, just 50 yards from my house, and no one would know until it was too late. I reflected on this, fifth grade style, for I don’t know how long. I kept looking at the light spilling out of our house over the yet unblemished snow from the storm earlier in the day. I was really cold by this time. Suddenly, something in me snapped and I said out loud, “This is stupid.” I simply got up, and still on my skates (in Wisconsin we learn to do this at an early age), walked my bike up the hill and into the garage. I entered the house to the usual greetings. No one in my family knew I nearly died out there, and I never told them until years later. That’s winter.

And that’s what we have to learn about winter, and that is what I have learned about winter and the long darkness it brings. There is always a light. Somewhere. Lying there in the snow bank in my little mortality crisis, it wasn’t just the cold that got me moving again. It was the light streaming from my family home, spilling out into the dark.

I have come to know that it is light that calls us into darkness in the first place. If there had been no light at the rink I wouldn’t have been there when it was dark. And that would have been a shame. I may never have conquered the troublesome aspect of that skating maneuver. I wouldn’t have faced those few moments of unease alone right after turning out the rink lights, and I may not have learned so early that I could climb out of a depressing situation simply by changing my mind and then acting on it. That’s winter.

Garrison Keillor says, “Winter isn’t a personal experience, it happens to everyone.” The trick is not to do it alone. But the catch to that is, you have to do it alone first to know you don’t have to do it alone. The light that shines in the darkness is always there. As we approach this winter solstice when the Sun, the light within and without, again lengthens its conscious presence in our lives, we should pause at that change point when lengthening dark becomes lengthening light. We should pause and realize that there is only one kind of darkness, the darkness of becoming. And then muse a little further on what am I becoming?

And don’t do it alone. Come to the SDAS holiday party. I, for one, want to hear your winter experience when you followed the light out of darkness. Or maybe we’ll just drink punch and eat chocolate together. Either one is fine, both is better. It’s winter. ‘Tis the season.

© 2001Deborah Smith Parker

On Winter: There is Always a Light. Somewhere.

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