To a Land of Four Seasons

Last year in May, I moved away. Away from the city I was born and raised in. Away from family and friends. Away from two seasons into four.

I moved upwards, if you’re looking at a map. From the centre of the earth where the equator lies, to the far north of the globe. It all happened so fast. One moment, I was on a family trip so my daughter could meet her Belgian family, a month later we knew this would be our new residence.

I remember getting this sense that the wheels had started to turn. The train was about to leave the station and I had to hop in to reach the next destination. Either that, or be stuck in the middle of nowhere. The cautious part of me would have had questions, but it all happened in such an orchestrated way that not a gap was left for doubt.

It was time. Time to say goodbye, time to start anew. Possibilities, a mirage in the distance, not yet clear but brimming with potential.

The turn of events was nothing I could have conjured up in my imagination, had I tried. I have a big imagination. The only choice was to open my hands and receive this new chapter. A box wrapped in ribbon, that could only be unwrapped on arrival.

As the days and weeks went by, I started to feel the end being nigh. The famous line from Semisonic’s, “closing time” ran loops in my mind.

‘Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end’.

In conversation with friends, I would speak of this upcoming move, as a feeling of being uprooted to be repotted. A necessary part of growth, when the plant no longer fits the vessel it is in. The experience mirrored this analogy every step of the way and in deeper ways than I could have envisioned.

See, I had left the centre between the tropics, where the weather changes, but ever so slightly. You could count on sunshine, and in some seasons rain. For 2 or 3 months a year it may be cold, but most of the year guarantees sunshine and warmth. Going northward, above the tropics, was to live through the famous four seasons we read about in books. The four seasons of Vivaldi’s masterpiece. Some so unfamiliar, that words couldn’t paint a picture. You had to feel it in your body to really know what it is, this inexplicable chill.

The most shocking of these seasons, for me, was winter. One cold winter’s morning, I tried to paint the picture in my own words.

“It is so cold, it is visible. 0 degrees cannot hide in plain sight. It is a translucent, whitish fog. Like the floating drizzle of a steaming hot shower.”

Funny how steaming hot and freezing cold can sit next to each other, like a good and evil twin, two sides of the same coin. Like yin and yang.

Winter frightened me then left me in awe. An awkward, disjointed dance with little rhythm and much resistance. One moment, I was wound up tight, my shoulders reaching inward and up, trying to protect parts of me from this shockingly unpleasant sensation. A few moment later, in a cosy heated room, I looked out the window to witness the first snowfall. My first in more than thirty years on this earth. Giddy like a child, more excited than my 2 year old. Marvelling at the wonders of nature and how many of us only get to witness a small fraction of it. The next morning, as I dashed to the shops for freshly baked bread, I breathed the freshest of fresh air. Clean as a whistle, cleaner than mountain air, in the middle of the city.

I have now experienced all four seasons.

In a beautiful twist of fate, my husband and I attended a concert of Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ in an old cathedral down the street, for our fourth marriage anniversary. Listening to music made long before we were born, designed for a space with walls built to breathe the notes in and exhale polished multilayered tones. Sounds that danced delicately, bouncing in and out of the cathedral walls, rising and falling like gentle rain on a warm sunny afternoon. It was a feeling of magic, of wonder, and reverence.

Winter remains the most memorable of all four seasons. Spring might be my favourite so far. Watching it breathe life to all the sleeping giants, the trees bared down in the fall and naked in winter. It blows magic fairy dust into the earth, elegantly sweeping brushstrokes and sprinkles of all the colours of the rainbow.

Summer reminds me of home, my first home, the city under the sun. Sometimes it burns like the northern desserts that firecely shine, reflecting the blazing, round fire in the sky.

What about autumn, you ask? Autumn is a gentle, bittersweet reminder, that all things come to an end. Even the beautiful things we wish would last forever. Endings can be both sad and beautiful. It turns the leaves from simple and steady shades of green, to fiery red, then the yellow of a sweet 10am sun, before they get brown and fall off branches in sweet resignation. Autumn is a promise of more good things to come, when we shed what was.

With time, patience, and a presence in the moment; as the skies darken and the cold winds blow, the sun will soon come.

May you learn to live through life’s seasons. Those you love out loud, and those you dread and quietly whisper about. If you take the time to look closely, you’ll see the beauty in all seasons.