winter cottage

Winter Cottage

February is the month we most need our angels.

I like to think that on these moonlit, 10-degree nights when ice festoons the windows and wind sweeps around the bare corners and snow turns blue that my house is full of company. A number of loving, eccentric spirits (most of whom I know but a few I do not) tumble down the chimney or drift under the back door and hang out for a bit while I am sleeping.

They sit in the wing chairs in front of the little stove or around the dining table or before the cold fireplace and tell each other stories of their long-ago loves, triumphs, sadnesses, their still unfufilled longings. Maybe they have a slow dance in the foyer or a cheese sandwich in the kitchen. I like to think they’re happy in this sweet house the way I am. I know they are surely welcome.

Winter is here in all its fierce, determined earnestness. Blizzards of blinding snow and wracking winds are followed by waist-high drifts and icicles long as sabers. And then a warming to 38 degrees and mushing through ankle-deep slush and driving through frigid lakes that swirl across once black roads. Then snow again, layer upon layer of snow and cold like a birthday cake in a dark fairy tale.

We walk in mincing steps on the slick back roads, those of us who crave the fresh, bracing air and a glimpse of the leaden or the stark blue sky. We visit the library to read the paper or thumb through an art book or make our way to a coffee shop or the post office or the grocery store, delighted just to be out and about and in the company of other hardy souls.

We make soups thick with black beans and onions and chowder to stand a spoon in. Tea is good with a sprinkle of cayenne, soda bread with bubbles of melted cheese. Socks are wooly; sheets are flannel; boots are serious. Summer is light years away. There is nothing on the beach but snow and an occasional crow, a sullen gull.

The spirits, known and unknown, sense our thinness, our weariness with the challenges of deep winter. In the pale mornings, you might find a love note on the refrigerator written in an elaborate, old-fashioned hand. Look for a tattered fortune or a torn secret under a chair cushion. There may also be a stone in the sink. Look around. We’re not alone. It’s February, the angels’ favorite month to visit.