The Kiddy Pool: Always Winter, Never Christmas

Every Tuesday in The Kiddy Pool, Erin Newcomb confronts one of many issues that parents must deal with related to popular culture.

I’ve begun to fear that my region of the U.S. might be under a curse to make it always winter, and never Christmas. Even the groundhog seems to be in the pay of the White Witch. Record low temperatures and record snowfall make me feel like it’s some kind of eternal winter, even though I recall unseasonably warm days in December and January. I understand that the thaw is imminent, but in the meantime, this month’s weather reminds me just how small and insignificant I am in the face of Mother Nature.

The bitter cold, complete with biting wind chills that prompt weather advisories about how long one can safely stay outdoors, has forced my family and I indoors. We’ve been swimming more at the local YMCA, and my husband and I have come to rely on the indoor track, which boasts 13 laps to the mile. Three times so far we’ve used it to do long runs of up to 16 miles, because my spring marathon doesn’t care that February is dangerously cold.

Yet while my joints and my psyche exclaim against the sharp, monotonous turns of the indoor track, I recognize a community I’ve never noticed before too. We see the same folks running and walking, again and again, as we lap them and dodge them and move out of their way in a loop that seems as endless as this, the shortest month. I see the same groups and start to recognize familiar faces around the gym; some of them cheer for me now, and I overhear conversations about meeting afterward for coffee just down the road. There’s a vibrant community indoors that I would never see if I were able to complete these runs outside, and I’m thankful for this glimpse of a world where friendship generates its own warmth.

This month has certainly had an impact on my own friendships as well, as playdates and girls’ nights get cancelled because of snow, and places that are our mainstays—like the local library—close their doors due to hazardous conditions. Every snow day I see Facebook posts about the complexities of juggling child care with this unrelenting winter. Even as a native Northeasterner, I don’t like to drive in the snow, and I can feel the way my social world closes around me in the same way that my running routes have shrunk.

I wonder, too, about the influence of the winter on my work, where my university has cancelled a number of classes and students’ attrition and educations factor in the lack of face time. Winter is always a kind of hunkering down, but I expect that it will be cozier. I admit that the close quarters have taken their toll on me this winter, and it’s amazing how quickly a day about freezing—quite rare in the last few weeks—starts to feel like a miracle of light and heat. Cabin fever, especially with children, is no joke.

At the same time, I felt my spirits lift when Lent began—not because there was no snow on the horizon but because it put my experience into a spiritual context. I’ve always loved Lent as a movement away from ordinary time, a period of reflection and self-examination. It is a time of addressing temptations and recognizing that Christ suffered alongside us and for us, culminating in Resurrection Sunday. Lent, like this winter, ends in light and life. And the spring sunshine that I long to feel warming my body is but a shadow compared to the light of Christ in my soul.