in which I confine my remarks to the weather

The snow is swirling wildly outside my window and the temperature apparently is falling another degree each hour. Matt has decided not to walk after all. Discovered, as I rushed along to church yesterday in my stupidly thin coat, that whenever I look out of the window or scuttle through the snow covered landscape, that I am always thinking only of summer. And more even, my mind has been playing tricks. When I open the door of the church and look at the cement slab, I see myself sitting with a cool drink and a friend and children capering around. When I go the other way, out towards the parking lot, I look up at the hills and see green everywhere. When I gaze dull-y out the front window at the big tree I see leaves unfurling.

And then I blink and see that it is really white and gray, not green, and feel the piercing cold, not the soothing balm of heat, and wonder if I am going mad. Maybe I am becoming a person who hallucinates. Maybe I am losing my mind. Maybe I'm developing some weird coping mechanism. 

So the weather is supposed to continue cold, to use an understated and inadequate word, all week. And I, I will continue to fuss and ask God why he doesn't love me. Why, I will ask, must I suffer? And God will tell me to stop complaining. And everyone else will walk around like nothing unusual or bad is blowing itself over the hills and frozen river.