January

 Everyone knows what you're talking about when you describe "high summer." The days are long, the grass is sweet, the sunlight is glorious, and all of our tanned legs are bare.

Is the corresponding time in winter "high winter" or "low winter?" Whichever is the correct term, this week was the zenith of high winter. It wasn't a particularly bad week, but every morning started in darkness, and I didn't get home until long after the sun had set and the cold seeped back into the house. 

The driveway and walk are both permanently frozen in dirty ice, shoveled out enough to get your car in and out but not safe to walk across easily. No matter how careful you are, you will always get snow into your dress shoes. 

The temperatures have been in the single digits whenever I start my car, and the windshield is covered in salt-rime. (I'm listening to an audio book of the Norse myths, and driving in a cold and dirty automobile feels like a closer experience to Jotunheim than anything else in the modern experience.

Not everything is unpleasant about High Winter, though. There is a magic in a shot of espresso cascading down that just isn't the same in the middle of august, and the whistle of the tea kettle is friendly. There's also something lovely about having social permission to be a little miserable. I am at Wegmans with an enormous stack of books right now, and I even have my earbuds in (with no music playing) just in case someone I know walks by and is tempted to start a conversation.

The Bills are out of the playoffs again, which makes the cold feel colder. I also started the spring semester of teaching. In both of my studios I have a tall window with a spectacular view. I've decided this semester to spend more of my teaching time admiring the view out of my window and less of the time getting frustrated at college students for not having practiced. 

Another tell-tale sign that we have reached the days of High Winter is that the kinder are all going crazy. They want to go outside every day, even when the wind chill is below zero. They need help getting bundled into their snow things (still damp and cold from the day before) and then they need help taking it all off again when they realize that they actually do need to go to the bathroom. (This involves tracking in a lot of snow, no matter how careful you are.)

They play outside for a bit, and you periodically shout at them to stay in the backyard. Then they realize how cold they are and start screaming, and you have to put your own boots on to pull them out of a snowbank. And then they are upset at your for not giving them hot chocolate, even though you told them that we aren't having hot chocolate today, because they are so cold that they will never be warm again. And they get you all wet and cold as you take their snow things off, and your hands inevitably smell like wet socks.

But the alternative to letting them go outside is keeping them in, and when you do that Felix will repeatedly fill up a sippy cup and dump it out on his floor for no reason at all. (With Owen in the room and being fully aware of what's going on, but not telling any adults about it.)

I think Low Winter is the right term.