Gray Again

What, exactly, are we supposed to do with this?  We wake to the dim light, not because it beckons us but because we must, we sleep with the pitter and the patter of ice and water against our window sills.  We slip over the day, uncertain if the next step will be slushed or wet or frozen, and we return to our homes in the fog of evening, waiting until we can sleep and repeat the day again. Is it Wednesday or Tuesday? It doesn’t matter. Not now, anyway.

I hurt my back the other day doing nothing in particular. It hurts today and it hurt yesterday, and without something changing it’s going to hurt tomorrow. But I’m used to it, like I’m used to this suffocating gray, like I’m used to the days blending and the night coming early. I’m used to all of this, and none of it bothers me anymore. There is nothing important to do today, but there are important days to come, and it’s so easy to prepare under this gray. The gray days are important days because they want nothing from us. They urge us to do nothing. They don’t distract, they don’t consume, they don’t ask. They just are and they leave us alone.

But we need the prodding of a sunny day, and we expect to be rushed and to be hurried and when we are we complain that we have too much to do. There are too many places to be, too many people to see, too many bills to pay. Too much of this and too much of that, and we want to rest. We need to rest. Under the brightest sky we have things to do and those places to find, and when we wish we could just rest. We wish we could find our house in the early evening with nothing to do and no where to go, to build a kindling fire and watch it burn. To eat a slowly prepared meal slowly because there’s no where to rush to, nothing to hurry about, no where calling. We hurry and we race and we wish we could slow down until we can, and then we don’t.

I wish it would be colder and sunnier and I wish the snow would build and the ice would skim and the fishermen would auger and the sailers would affix blades to their boats. I wish these things would happen in this season, but today they won’t. Tomorrow, nothing. Later in the month something might happen, the ice might return, the snow might fall, the men might reel in their tiny fishing poles and boast to the passersby of their pile of flopping food. But none of that is happening today, because today we get to move more slowly. We get to make that fire and eat that dinner and watch that game. We get to do these things and we shouldn’t complain, because these gray days are a gift that expect nothing in return.