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Winter finally descends allowing a short respite from the balmy breezes and sweat-inducing humidity of our ten month summer.
Nights dip into the fifties and we dig out our sweaters from wherever it is we’ve hidden them. We put on the last remaining clothes from our other lives up North. Long pants and fuzzy materials give a much-needed rest to our over-worn tropical wear. We inwardly smirk at the unhappy tourists crossing our paths, hearing them wonder why their week isn’t exactly the endless summer they were counting on. Still they wear their shorts and sunglasses. They drink their Margaritas then walk the windswept beaches scavenging for trophy shells. There are even a handful of nights when we flip on the heat to remove the chilly edge from our homes. We light some candles and sip hot cocoa as dreary moisture falls from leaden skies and glistens on our screened lanais. We bundle up at bedtime and drift toward dreams of winters a thousand miles away, falling snow, fireplaces, shoveling driveways and scraping stubborn frost off windshields. We wake up to sun-shafts streaming in through the blinds and the local weather guy telling us the next few days will be back in the high 70’s. As we walk outside to get our morning paper the sight of newly blossomed flowers erases the last vestiges of the arctic imaginings of the night just past. Just a handful of these fleeting days are all we get. Hold on to the cold before it disappears for another year. These are the memories we’ll cherish deep in the sauna of late summer traffic jams. These moments are all the winter we get. |
