The birthday of life and of love and wings

I was reminded last week by someone who shall remain unnamed that I hadn’t updated my blog in the last seven days.  True enough, but this same person failed to notice that in fact I had posted two new articles the week before, and I thought this should buy me a little time at least.  And that’s the story I’m sticking with.

See, the problem is I have an intense dislike of winter.  I don’t feel like doing anything in this barren season, even updating my blog.  The polar bears have got it right – hibernation is the way to go.  The cold and snow are not my friends.  The car looks like it rolled in a salt pit, walking is tricky at best (my dearly beloved says the way I negotiate the snowbanks makes him tense) and then there’s all those layers of clothing which I’ve noticed don’t really keep a body warm at all.  Lured down to the “balmy south” with promises of mild winters, I discovered only too late that the definition of “mild” ranges widely and is often based on a comparison to the winters of one’s childhood.  “Cold?  Why, this ain’t cold.  I remember when I was young, back in nineteen-ought-three it were.  Now that there was a cold winter.  Pipes froze solid, they did.  Got our water from the river, diggin’ down with a pickax.  And snow!  Had to tunnel up from the front door twenty feet before you could see over the bank.”

Yeah, OK.  But it’s funny how knowing there have been worse winters doesn’t make me feel one bit warmer, or one bit happier.  And then I find out the robins are wintering over in Essex County.

I saw it for myself a couple of years ago, just a few days before Christmas.  I looked out our kitchen window during a snowstorm to see what I thought was a robin sitting in the mulberry tree in our backyard.  I call my dearly beloved to have a look and he got out the binoculars to be sure.  “I don’t believe it,” he said, and handed them to me.  Praying that our neighbours wouldn’t misunderstand my actions, I aimed the binoculars and there it was, a robin without a doubt.  Someone said later that it must have been a late fledge or maybe a sick one that just wasn’t up for the migration that year.  But a few days ago someone else confirmed another sighting of robins and felt certain that they were indeed wintering over.

Amazing the effect that had on me. 

e. e. cummings wrote “i who have died am alive again today,/ and this is the sun’s birthday; this is the birth/ day of life and of love and wings”. 

The robins are wintering over.