As I sit, more-or-less nestled in my house, I’m pretending I don’t have to go out to work today. We have about a foot of new snow, temperatures are in single digits and even though it’s pretty, it’s also pretty extreme living.
I am reminded this morning of the words of an elder. It was the late 1970’s, and I worked with a woman very close to retirement age. The elder was her dad, a gentleman I never met. We would come in to work, grumping about the weather — it’s cold, it’s snowy, boy is the wind bad today, and other typical complaints. She would laugh, reminded as I am now, the words of her father.
When this lady was growing up (and that would have been in the 1910’s and 20’s’) she and her siblings would be complaining as we are now about winter and its challenges. No matter how mild or how awful the winter weather, her dad always responded with, “What are you going to do when winter comes?”
She claimed there could be five feet of snow and negative temperatures, and her dad would still ask his question, with all the kids moaning even more and insisting he was an impossible dad. The question still brings a smile, as it has in our family for forty years now.
So…… What are you going to do when winter comes?
(c) 2018, J. Cools
Moon Dance 