Putting on the Big Girl Boots

Winter separates the girls from the women. If the cold won’t break you, the treacherous sidewalks might. Tack on the lack of day light, the stink of wet wool, the skid of tires on ice-packed streets and it’s enough to make even the most hearty of us whimper in defeat.

I have a friend who is permanently cheerful. She laughs more than she speaks and sees the cup not as half-full but as beautifully overflowing. Her joy is infectious, so when she tells me that after four decades of New England winters, she is “done with it” and depressed, I realize how much trouble the season can be.

We talk for a while over the phone, plan imaginary tropical get-aways, and when her children dump their soaked winter-wear on the floor of her kitchen, she sighs.

“Guess we should get our big girl boots on,” she says to me, and I agree.

Meanwhile, my big girls boots are like mini-trucks for my feet and while they keep out the slush and cold, I feel like I’m wearing flippers sometimes. No matter though, since there is nothing dainty about scrambling over a snow bank to get a child and his backpack into the car.

While my husband and I split many of the domestic chores, he is still the primary shoveler. I clean off the cars, which mostly consists of me blasting the defrost, while he breaks his back moving cement-like snow from our paths and driveway. The kids are no help as they are too busy trekking in and out, in and out, and leaving mugs of half drunken hot cocoa everywhere. Still, they spend hours outside making literal mountains out of molehills and sledding their way into heaps of hilarious fun.

It’s not so bad, really.

There are upsides to the winter, I tell my sad friend. It’s beautiful for one, I say, especially after this last storm, which seems to have been flash frozen all around us. The trees seem almost architectural, outlined in white, twisted into new forms and creating tunnels out of ordinary roads. And with hairdos squashed and mangled under wooly ski caps, there’s no need to worry about looking permanently bed-headed.

Plus, delayed school openings are the best of both worlds: a lazy wake-up and no need to rush makes for the most pleasant of mornings.

So, we’ll zip up, stack layer over layer, invest in quantities of chapstick and toe warmers, eats mounds of spaghetti and chocolate chip cookies, and wait for the thaw that will come.

In the meantime, we’ll lace up the big girl boots and get on with it.