Winter Pays for Summer

I love the HBO fantasy series "Game of Thrones" based on the George RR Martin books. I love the stoic Stark family, their home in Winterfell, the way they go around saying ominously to one another, "Winter is coming." The story also involves a Knight's Watch, a monkish group of outliers pledged to guard a humongous wall of ice in the North. Everywhere, cold dark characters, cold dark landscapes, brutal, cold, and more cold and brutal. Not for nothing, winter (not just in this series, of course) is associated with discontent, hardship, challenge, wanting and waiting for the fruits of spring and summer.

Here in Northern California, we've had the driest, sunniest winter on record.

The good news (and this is huge) is that our house is progressing well. The roof and framing are nearly finished, and it looks and feels like a house. The downstairs kitchen cabinetry, floors, and countertops that we wanted to preserve have remained intact and damage-free. Rough plumbing is completed and the electrical wiring will start next week. In every room there are views to look at and places to sit. All but one of the windows are framed out and await installment. That jumble of beams and rubble that faced us at the beginning of the project has shaped into a sturdy structure that no wolf can blow down (though on second thought, I'd better save wolf metaphors for the next post). We are getting close.

Despite the mild weather, however, this winter has been rough. In December I had a jarring bike accident on my way home from work. In January, a household lice outbreak had us laundering for ages. February brought a meniscus tear in my left knee, followed by surgery in the beginning of March. And the real doozy: a week later, we were told by our current landlords that they wouldn't extend our lease, as we had hoped, ironically because they are anxious to start their own remodeling project. We have to move out by the end of April, well before our projected completion date. Now that's cold. The thought of moving again, especially our entire household's worth of belongings, makes me physically ache.

But...

Have I mentioned that we are getting close? Knowing that warmer days are coming and this winter of winters is receding is a thought that will buoy us and help us power through for these last few months. We are waiting for the fruits of summer, and shit does make good fertilizer.