In the Grip of the Ice Princess

Surely some one of us has angered the gods and/or pissed off the fairies. This winter never ends.

Winter Gazebo

When I was a little girl, I became so concerned during a long, unrelenting winter (like this one) that I asked my mother if spring was really going to come. I remember saying, “But what if this year is different?” It must have been February, because she said, “Oh, I've seen it snow well into March some years, and even early April.” 

 That night I had a dream in which the exact same conversation took place. Except at the end of it, I exclaimed, "But Mom, this is May!"

Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein because a volcano exploded and killed summer with a massive cloud of ash. She and her husband and her friends had nothing better to do than sit inside and write ghost stories. The cold and the damp and the endless grey somehow made her think of forlorn, abandoned monsters who run amok, killing out of sheer love-starved despair.

The Brightness

I get that. Winter is a kind of monster. Rather than a huge man pieced together out of cadavers, I picture her (or at least, this particular winter) as one of those cold, malignant women who smile so pleasantly while they talk elegantly about how fat you've gotten. A woman you realize, too late, you never should have invited to lunch, because she's going to stay. And stay.

Stone and Ice

I guess Princess Winter brings out the monster in me, too, because I'll be glad when the bitch is dead, murdered by sun and crocus and equinox breezes. I will dance on her grave, feeling the earth warming beneath my bare feet. I will exult in her demise, despite her beauty. Then I will turn my face to the sun and forget she ever existed.

Long Shadows