For me, there's only two seasons: "Summer" and "Not Summer."

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You can probably guess which one I prefer. 99% of the things I most enjoy are things that are easiest to do in summertime, which is 1). play music, 2). ride motorcycles, 3). explore stuff like abandoned buildings and towns to which I've never been before. If it's an abandoned building in a town to which I've never been before, so much the better.

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I used to have another Facebook page before this one, and if you knew me from that one, you're probably familiar with the fact that I hate winter. That one got hijacked by some jerkwad in Sausalito (that's what the alert email said, anyway), and while I have no idea why some rando on the other side of the country might want to take over a page dedicated to Totally Random Facts, Funny-Sounding and/or Unnecessarily Long Words, Weekly Palindromes, regularly interspersed with diatribes primarily focused upon How Much I Hate Winter, the fact is they now have, and so I reluctantly must bid that page a fond adieu.

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Well, this is a new and as-yet-to-be-hijacked page, and I've already spewed forth some vitriol on how much I despise winter on this one. But I'm learning that it's not quite that simple.

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I'm writing this on a day that comes at the end of a string of days when the temperature has not yet risen into the positive digits. That makes me grumpy. -15 degrees Fahrenheit is a depressing statistic on a Sunday morning when you are getting up at 5:15 am to make it to church. That kind of temperature does weird things to your car, if your car is of a certain vintage, as mine always are. On my lovely old Toyota Avalon, the rear shock absorbers would freeze solid and, if you forgot and opened one of the rear doors, you couldn't shut 'em because they wouldn't latch. Instead they'd just bounce right back open every time you slammed one of them shut. My friends thought it was hysterical, but try driving it like that when you forget about it and realize you have another half-hour to go to get from Yorkville back to your house and you have to reach behind the seat and try to hold the door closed as you drive. That'll piss off the most peaceable of people. The old Mercury I bought this past June, however, doesn't do that, thank goodness. When it gets this cold, the rear doors won't open at all.

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It's been so cold that school was outright cancelled this past Friday, and we've moved to a remote-learning format for today. As I write this, I am in between my 6th period Honors Chemistry and my 8th period AP Chemistry classes, and I am sitting in my little home office grading labs while listening to "She Does It Right" by Dr. Feelgood. I appreciate the power of technology that allows this flexibility, even though I'll never fully trust it.

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It's so cold that the furnace runs almost constantly. That's a double-edged sword, because when it does stop, a part of me is convinced that it stopped because it just quit and won't start up again.

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It's so cold that the house makes funny noises. That's fine unless it's one in the morning and you live by yourself except for the cat, who's asleep on the bed next to you so whatever that thump was, it sure wasn't him.

But.

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Am I about to tell you that there are things about winter I don't despise?

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Well, to answer that question, let's compare winter to summer.

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Summertime means a lot to me, just because it fits my particular idiom. It means three months of getting up whenever, which is usually 8:30 or so, and not knowing what I'm going to do with the day. I love that.

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It means riding every night, which usually involves no particular place to go but always culminates with getting back just as the last of twilight fades from the western rim of the sky, while Debussy's "Claire de Lune" sparkles and croons from the speakers. If I time it right, that last marvelous arpeggio in D-flat hits just as I pull into the garage.

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It means playing show after show after show, sometimes as many as two dozen in a single month. Sometimes the stages are small and rickety, and the horn section is in danger of falling through an ever-expanding hole in the floor because some doofus technician thought MDF was the best material for high-traffic areas.

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Sometimes the stages are massive. Sometimes the sound system blows, but if it's Colin and Dave and Winston, you know it's gonna be legend. Sometimes the crowd--what there is of it--doesn't care. Sometimes they line up for your autograph. How fortunate can a guy be? I get to make music with good friends, have the time of my life and at the end you're going to give me some money? I'll take it.

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It means appreciating the majesty of creation in all its forms, from the deep and somber green of the woods, to the glory of the colors of sunset, to the awesome power of a thunderstorm, to the nigh-unspeakable appreciation of waking up in the morning and realizing that, today, I get to do it again.

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It means driving back home after a gig with the sunroof open and starlight, or the light pollution from the city, pouring in. I like them both.

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It means sleeping with the windows open and the cat perched on the windowsill, contentedly keeping watch on the night shift.

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It means praising God with every upshift, every note played or sung, every raindrop or high summer breeze, every cold beer drunk with friends.

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How can winter possibly compete with that?

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The short answer is: it can't.

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For me, winter mostly means waiting. Waiting to be able to go outside without fifteen layers on, waiting to open the windows again, waiting to get the bikes out again.

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But, while I'm waiting, there are things to do and appreciate.

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Winter means time to write, and, in between writing, it means schlepping the manuscript off to as many agents as I can and hoping one will bite. No luck yet, but I'm keeping those fingers crossed while I work on the next one.

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Winter means time to go places. It means spotting a town in Indiana or Wisconsin with an interesting name and just hopping in the car to see what it looks like. (Though I mostly try to stay out of Wisconsin. *shudders*)

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It means time to practice. Time to nap. Time to catch dinner with family or friends. Things that often become obscured by the whirlwind that is summer.

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But, in my opinion, the best thing about winter is when it ends. Not just for the obvious reasons, but also because the transition is wonderful, and the anticipation makes it all worth it.

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Around here in the Upper Midwest, winter is three colors: white, grey and black. Maybe the occasional dull brown to really spice things up. And it doesn't really matter since it's dark when I leave for work and dark again by the time I get back home.

 

But as the temperatures start to climb and the snow starts to melt and recede, we get little step-by-step indicators that the world around here is starting to wake up. That first patch of green grass; not the dead yellow stuff that appears as the seasons change, but that deep dark green that only new grass has. That first robin. Buds on the trees. It means the end of winter is coming, and it's not far off. It means that, soon, the world will bust out of black-and-white and into full Technicolor Vista-Vision. And once that happens, all those good things that come with summer are also close behind.

 

This winter has so far been a rough one, and there's undoubtedly more ahead in the nine weeks left until spring is officially here. Heck, even Prince says that sometimes it snows in April. But I can wait. I've done it before. In the meantime, I'm going to go downstairs, give the furnace a nice (but gentle) pat and tell it what an absolutely first-rate job it's doing. Keep kickin', Libby.