Today..

Today was the first day of December. And it seemed like it. It was cold and windy. The sky was clear, but not like it is clear in the Summer, Spring, and Fall. In the Winter, the clear sky is Cruel and and bitter.

For some, Winter is sunny and a bit cooler than usual. Others, rainy. And for some, it is a glorious winter-wonderland of lush snow, dear falling flurries, skiing and ice-skating.


But not here.


Here, Winter is not a nice thing. Winter is trees, striped of glory. Winter is my mother depressed. Winter is ground that is ether frozen so hard it it hurts to walk on, or defrosted and mushy and muddy. Winter is pet water dishes with nothing in then but a solid chunk of ice. Winter is all lovely thing that grow, gone. They are not ''sleeping under a blanket of snow,'' they are cold and dead. Winter does not bring out my romantic side, as you can see. And today, to me, was the first day of Winter. It seemed as though everything that had been holding on to the last bit of Autumn it could salvage, gave up. Winter has come.



So I stayed inside.



Mariana, by Henrietta Rae