And the skies are grey

When I moved to California over 25 years ago, one of several things that drove me absolutely nuts was the seasonal patterns.   A long dry summer and then a wet winter.   Two seasons--rainy and not.   Or as I used to tell friends and family back east,  "mudslide" and "fire" seasons.    I don't miss winter, and like the verbal concept of most Bay area folks when they refer to the snow as a destination rather than a weather pattern (that is "going to the snow), but the lack of rain over several months tends to wear on my soul to the extent that I feel like the parched earth of a Depression era farm.

We haven't had rain here in a while and its now January.   The promised rain of yesterday has not arrived and the sky hangs with dark clouds seemingly heavy with moisture.  Like a two year old with a coveted toy, it teases with the promise of things withheld.

While drummer boy doesn't particularly like rain, I need rain.  It allows me to slow down, to hibernate inside.  To drink coffee and defer plans.  To read and cuddle with the felines.  Its a panacea for all the ills I have as an introvert.

Now I know I've got a heart because it is breaking.

My oldest is heading back across the county to school again.   I won't see her until June.  And while there is Skype, phone calls and texts, its really not the same.  

Its the little things I'll miss like watching "How to Steal a Million", or having tea every day after work in my mother's portmerion mugs.  But most of all the intimacy of conversation that only comes about when you are both in the same room.

My dreams have been strange lately, full of odd messages wrapped in odder visuals.   Last night I dreamed that the Prose Edda had pronounced that I was the "changing human" and I had to always get tattoos.  My arms were intricate full sleeves of images of winter and spring, including lily of the valleys and bare trees.  I planted a broken off branch of a pussy willow tree and it began to grow new branches immediately from the scars in the branches.

Change is neither good nor bad.   Its change and you have to embrace it.   Even if your heart is breaking.