Love Hate Winter

I love winter. I love feeling warm at night in bed.

I hate winter. Since I was a child, winter meant joint pain. Now it’s bone and muscle and joint and ligament pain. And I know it won’t get better.

I love winter. I love watching my children enjoy the puddles and feeling so cool in their raincoats and wellies.

I hate winter. Winter is when the poor suffer more. At least in summer, you remove layers to try cool down. In winter, the lack of a jersey, a jacket, a pair of socks, is felt. In winter, you realize your children have nothing warm to wear because they outgrew last year’s winter clothing but you have no money this year.

I loved winter. I would ask my father to make me hot cocoa and I’d have it with toast with margarine. I felt rich in winter. It was my version of the hot chocolate the white girls had in my class.

I hated winter. I couldn’t hold a pen, needed two hands to try hold the mug of cocoa because my fingers would not bend. I hated waiting out in the cold rain for a taxi to get to school.

I can’t wait for there to be one lovely, temperate season. A season in which everyone will be comfortable. A season of plenty for everyone, when the lack of money won’t matter because God is the provider and we live in paradise. And there will be no more pain. No need for a friend to ask if my body is holding up. And no need to reply that it’s not.