La Voz de Galicia – December 20, 2024 →
And so, suddenly, winter arrives. It’s curious, because it comes every year, yet it always catches me by surprise. Is it winter already? Has Christmas arrived? Wasn’t it September just moments ago? The cold comes, the hunched shoulders, the aching fingers, the scarves, the gloves. And amidst all this, I find myself thinking that just as it comes, it will also leave, and suddenly it will be spring or summer, and I’ll miss winter—the very winter we’re not even fully in yet and that I complain so much about.
Sitting in my mother’s house, I think about the winters of my childhood, back when heating wasn’t meant to make homes warm, but simply to keep them from being unbearably cold. I also think about the winters of my mother’s childhood, which I know little about but can imagine were harsh (in the rural 1940s, in the heart of deep Galicia). And then I feel bad for complaining about always being cold… The cold doesn’t let me be; it doesn’t let me think. It brings out that other side of me, where all I want is to curl up and wait for it to leave—this cold that seeps into your bones and refuses to let go.
Each person is a world, in my existence the cold is an enemy, but I know that not everyone suffers from it in the same way. Some even enjoy it, just as I enjoy the heat of summer—that summer that feels so far away and will come suddenly, when I no longer feel cold.
Maybe what I’m trying to say is that, despite the seasons, time passes faster every day. And between the cold and the heat, between apathy and euphoria, between joys and sorrows, life moves on, rushing past, without giving us time to understand that just a moment ago, it was winter again, the same as it will be tomorrow.
