My February Face

A cold winter Saturday.  The whole day ahead of us.  We went to Fayze's for breakfast, my husband and me.  The park beckoned to us (or to me and my camera).  As I scrambled around Friendship Gardens, my husband was on the lookout for birds.  I was trying out my prime lens which offers no zoom feature so you have to be right up on your subject.  Kind of acrobatic.  But I love the shallow depth of field and the background blur with the prime.  Photography and short, brisk walks seem to be the only things combatting the February blues.  Though we haven't had the cold temperatures here in Wisconsin, I seem to be freezing to the core.  Unless I'm submerged in a bubble bath or under four layers, I'm just not warm. 

"There is a privacy about it which no other season gives you ..... In spring, summer and fall people sort of have an open season on each other; only in the winter, in the country, can you have longer, quiet stretches when you can savor belonging to yourself."

- Ruth Stout

One of the things I do like about winter is this quiet time where we all crawl into our caves for the coldest months.  Dark at 5pm, either cold or damp and windy or wet, none of it is fun or preferrable.  So in we go for soup and blankets and at my house, Netflix. Now is the time to get caught up on all of the shows I can't watch during the season either because we don't have HBO or I don't find the time during other seasons of the year.  So while I want February to be whisked away quickly, I am savoring this private, quiet time.

"Why, what's the matter,

That you have such a February face,

So full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?"

- William Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing

I'm pretty sure I do have a February face.  And it's much different than my July or August face because that spells body warmth, so many more hours of daylight and countless festivities to choose from.  But it is not July or August.  It is February.  

I remember an acquaintance one time saying that he "didn't live according to seasons."  I don't remember anything else this person said other than this crazy statement.  How can seasons not affect a person?

So I kept on walking through the park. And I thought, 'to everthing there is a season'...now how does that go?  

To everything there is a season,

a time for every purpose under the sun.

A time to be born and a time to die;

a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

a time to kill and a time to heal ...

a time to weep and a time to laugh;

a time to mourn and a time to dance ...

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing;

a time to lose and a time to seek;

a time to rend and a time to sew;

a time to keep silent and a time to speak;

a time to love and a time to hate;

a time for war and a time for peace.

ecclesiastes 3:1-8

So I put on my February face.  But took stock in these words.  

And I enjoyed the birds.