January Blues

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas we celebrate four family birthdays, and travel to celebrate two separate Christmases.   By the time December is over, I’m spent.  January usually provides some quiet relief for this over-stimulated introvert.  

Meanwhile, January is an extremely busy time for Martha who subs daytime in an elementary school and coaches practices and games with her basketball team most evenings.  She is rarely home except to change and grab something to eat. And I normally love this month of peace and quiet.

But this year, January felt different.

The northeast was gripped by an unusually frigid stretch, with temps barely coming out of minus territory.  We sealed ourselves in, closing all our insulated blackout curtains to ward off drafts. The house became   like a dark cave.  We had multiple snowfalls with one piling on an additional 24 inches on top of the existing, never melting snow.  It wasn’t even the magical kind - too dry to make snowmen or snowangels.  Just huge drifts making my world feel smaller and more shut in..  

 

Homebound, with no sunlight, and too cold to even take a walk, I began to feel something heavier than cabin fever. A familiar but long-absent sadness crept in.  It was a scary feeling for me as anxiety is now more my dysfunction than this claustrophobic heaviness I used to suffer from. It caught me off guard.

I was feeling particularly fragile with a melancholy I could not shake.  

I often felt that I needed a good cry, but couldn’t even muster that.   Feeling sorry for myself, I couldn’t even start a gratitude list which is my usual go-to mood lifter. I admit I was a little scared that I wouldn’t be able to dig myself out of the hole. 

Come February I had to force myself to go on my annual New York City weekend with my daughters.  Travel was stressful, with trains being cancelled due to weather, but we all managed to meet up in time for an indulgent French lunch, a matinee of the update musical ‘Chicago’ (a show I had promised them years ago, but Covid cancelled) and lingered and laughed over a warm Italian dinner.  Sharing a hotel room (and bed) with my daughters, one who is very pregnant, was a “fun” experience.  And being in my home city with my girls started to lift the veil of darkness that had been weighing on me. 

BTW - I was pleasantly surprised at how crowded the restaurants, theater and stores were, hearing multiple languages and seeing a full spectrum of skin tones wherever we went.  I had feared that tourists and immigrants had totally disappeared with the current federal policies.

Back home I planted flower seedlings under lights in my basement.   This simple, annual ritual has helped break me out of my winter doldrums. Watching those tiny green leaves pushing bravely out of the soil never fails to be miraculous to me. 

It is now mid February. The sun has finally come out, the days are longer and the temps have risen to bearable.  I can take daily walks and I delight watching the birds in my yard venture out to peck at the seed I’ve been throwing on top of the snow.  We are definitely headed in the right direction.

And yesterday, as if to chase the last vestiges of depression,  my 4 year old grandson burst into the house, all smiles, and slammed into me with an arm full of flowers shouting “Happy Valentine’s Day”.  

Sometimes joy seeps in quietly.

And sometimes it runs straight into you.