Dearest Winter,
We hate you.
You have overstayed your visit and you smell like fish.
We have done puzzles, played cards, watched movies, built armies of snowmen, sledded countless hills and been in two mad rushes at the supermarket where we all seem to be looking for milk and bread though half of us are dairy intolerant and gluten free.
We have frozen day after day in your icy winds and even going to the mailbox seems like a punishment greater than death.
Our preschool age children are about to stage a coup d’etat if they don’t get outside to run around but instead they run like rabid squirrels around our first floors, the same route that we ourselves endlessly pace, stopping every so often to peek between the blind in search of sunshine.
We have argued time and time again with our tweenagers who all want to still wear shorts even though it’s below freezing and we haven’t felt our toes for four weeks.
Nothing has changed with our teenagers because we aren’t even sure they know it’s snowing unless someone texts them that fact.
We’ve had enough of plastering on a smile and trudging through the days pretending to be cheery.
We’ve had enough of frantically Googling indoor places to take our kids that hopefully cost less than a month’s worth of a college education.
We don’t want to defrost our cars and we can’t afford our heating bills any longer.
We’ve missed more days of school and work then we can count on our frozen digits. We are actually starting to miss them both in a sentimental way; we long for school bells and cafeteria lines and parking garages and paystubs and even the kids aren’t dropping ice cubes in the toilet or wearing their pajamas inside out anymore.
You have muddied our boots, ruined good shoes, trashed our lawns and put holes in our sleds.
You are a brute and half of Richmond has Seasonal Affective Disorder, appropriately called SAD.
Richmond is SAD.
So, Winter, be on your way.
We are looking for a spring in our step and the summer sun on our doorstep and when they come we won’t complain one minute about the excessive heat, the high cooling bills, the sweat that pools behind our knees, the smell of chlorine in our children’s hair, the insufferable allergies or the fact that all our children will be home every minute of every hour of every day for three months straight.
Promise.
Sincerely,
Richmond Moms
About Rebecca Suder