A definition of winter

by David Benjamin

“Winter is icumen in,/ Lhude sing Goddamm,/ Raineth drop and staineth slop,/ And how the wind doth ramm!/ Sing: Goddamm…”

— Ezra Pound, “Ancient Music”

 

MADISON, Wis.—When does winter start?

Although I’ve seen a hell of a lot of winter by now, I hesitate to pin down the exact moment that it settles down across the land and exerts its icy grip on mind, body and spirit. The onset of winter, of course, has its official kyrie eleison at the solstice. But the turn of a season doesn’t punch a clock, nor is the shortest day of the year usually the coldest or most wintry. 

In search of winter’s certainty, I can step outside and stroll the frigid streets, spotting the signs: Shriveled jack-o-lanterns rotting on doorsteps, the death of the last geranium in a window box, a ragged V of tardy geese honking down the flyway, naked trees and snowy sidewalks with trampled ice patches, Christmas lights and Salvation Army Santas. I could likewise mark the season’s transition with my change of clothes, from flannels and sweaters to a muffler, gloves and a serious overcoat. Or I could look around one morning to recognize—and surrender to—winter’s invasion of my body, as Jack Frost creeps into my blood, scours my skin, seeps to my bones, chills my innards, numbs my nose and ices my beard. 

None of this sensory data, however, means to me that winter has come in, really, truly and irreversibly. Its harbinger is, rather, a feeling that occurs randomly, a moment when a fleeting impression—sent perhaps by a biting gust or a hot sip of coffee—triggers emotions and summons memories of winters past, when the air, the cold and the darkness whisper to me, “Bundle up, pal. This is it.”

Or, maybe, it’s all about a girl.

Paris, where I was ’til mid-December, was colder than usual but it was not winter. Instead, the city presented a persistent—and familiar—gray autumn. The sun crouched behind shrouds of clouds, its angular light-streams now and then pushing through briefly to illuminate brilliant gold and orange treescapes that blur on the eye, as though rendered by Sisley or Monet. There were leaves. There were café-goers still dining on the terrasse. This is not winter. 

On the morning I departed, Paris attempted a wintry tease, with a thin dusting of snow on cartops and grassy patches. This was hardly convincing. Nor was the snow that fell in Madison the night I landed here, after three flights and seventeen weary hours on route. It looked wintry, but it wasn’t yet. I wasn’t ready. Something was missing. 

In the back of my mind, faintly, there was a girl.

The next morning, I awoke to snow on everything, but wet and sloppy, melting, dripping, slushing. Sweater weather still, not winter.

That night, driving back to the airport to collect my wife, I watched through the windshield a fresh snowfall barely visible in the air, but swirling and dancing, ghostly against black pavement. I knew the feel of this snow, which is not soft and flaky. These were tiny ballistic specks that pelt your eyelids and make you blink. Each one bounces off your skin, leaving behind an icy pinprick a millisecond in duration, like an acupuncture ambush. 

Even inside the car, I knew this feeling. As we inched home on suddenly treacherous streets, I tried to describe to Junko the pleasure of walking toward the wind on just such a night, wincing at the attack of the driven pellets, moving in a cocoon of white-streaked blackness as my skin tingled and my ears froze. In the cold, in the hard snow, in the night, beside a lake just beginning to freeze, there’s a solitude that leaves you feeling like the last living soul on the first day of an eternal Ice Age. 

Here, then, was winter—almost.

If I could just remember that girl.

The next morning, a woman passed me, leading an embarrassed dog decked out in a Fair Isle sweater and four tiny pooch-booties. A DPW worker, spreading salt, nodded a chilled hello. I came across Jason, a hobo friend whose stall is the doorway of Walgreen’s, with his stoic, human-tolerant dog, Alabama. I gave Jason the usual offering and told him, “Don’t stay out here too long.”

“Don’t worry. I won’t.”

But he would. There were people to see and, with each, a conversation.

That night, as it snowed again, I remembered the girl. Her name was Toni. We had met at religion class, ironically because both of us were drifting from religion. She was in ninth grade, I in tenth. But, in some ways, she was old beyond her fourteen years. So I was surprised when I proposed a date and she, glowing and flirtatious, said okay, great. 

Really?

Why not?

We were both too young to drive, so we took the bus downtown, to the movies. It’s too long ago now. I don’t remember the film, or even the theater, or whether, afterward, we went to the soda fountain at Rennebohm’s. I have no idea what we talked about. But I remember the snow. It started before we caught the bus back to Toni’s neighborhood. We had to brush it off our coats when we boarded. As it fell, we watched it through the bus window. As I walked her home, it covered us. She was—I remember this, too—heartbreakingly lovely in the snow. The cold had turned her cheeks gently pink. A wisp of her hair had escaped her hat and rested on her forehead, dusted with snowflakes. 

When we stopped in front of her house to say goodbye, the snow was several inches deep around us and the world was deathly silent. We’d been drawn into the cocoon. There were just two of us on earth and Toni—I know this now, I did not then—wanted me, expected me, to kiss her. She’d been kissed already. Of this, I was sure. But I had never kissed a girl and knew no tactics to accomplish the feat. Kissing Toni, that sweet, perfect face—even if I’d done it badly, even if Toni had to correct my technique until we got it right—would have made us both happy. It would have made that night, despite the bus and the weather, the best date we’d ever had. We would have fallen, as much as possible and perhaps not for very long, in love.

I said good night. I left her on her doorstep—unkissed—and trudged home, in the snow. 

Here, then, was winter.

Just a few days later, on the phone, I said something wrong. Suddenly, we were finished. I never saw her again. Of course, having lost Toni, I was finally in love with her. I’ve felt the same ever since. Lately, I’ve come to see that night in the snow, when I fumbled away the most innocent and thrilling kiss of my life, as the perfect romance. It’s like a dragonfly trapped in amber, forever the same. Toni will always be soft-focus beautiful. I’ll always be clueless. It began with a surprise, lived out its entire lifespan in one snowy evening, and ended with the kiss that should have been but wasn’t. It was my first lesson in love, and in love’s regret. It left me with a dream girl for life and a definition of winter.

In the snow, I’m always walking away from Toni.