Winter is coming.
As we start to bid summer farewell and turn the corner into fall, there are many changes in the air. The mornings are cooler and boots will be more readily worn celebrating sweater’s triumphant return to closets and dresser drawers. We will be assaulted in all manners by pumpkin-spiced hysteria. College football, Halloween, fall television show premiers and returns, phone book-sized fall issues of fashion magazines, it’s all there. A less noticed change however will be the conversion of summer flings into winter relationships.
Over the last decade here in the PacNW, winter has shown she’s not to be ignored. And much like our primate ancestors, we will seek the warm comfort of company both physically and emotionally. To me that’s what drives the initial relationship conversion. The hunt for a place to cohabitate, new leases being drawn up or names being added to existing ones, small moving trucks dotting the side streets of Portland, the free piles on those same street corners growing in size and frequency. Of course, relationships will have their mid-winter trials, the dreaded Holidays and by spring, we’ll see more small moving trucks dotting the same side streets of Portland, and the free piles on those same street corners will now contain the discarded remnants of failed relationships and Craigslist will see and uptick in lease take over ads.
I welcome the change the seasons will soon bring. Not in the arms of another, but snuggled up in bed with a stack of books, my dog snoring not so softly by my side, wearing my dad’s wool sweater, wrapped in my grandmother’s crocheted quilt, sipping a cup of Granny Tea made by my mother knowing I’m exactly where I need to be and thankful for the comforts I have.
Winter is coming, and I cannot wait.