My mother named me
Winter for the
storms and blows before. My
mother named me Winter for all the
cold and silent places that can live inside
a woman's heart. "Know these," she said, "know these and you may grow, aware of the dangers that lie before and the ways your heart will
shatter over and over and over."
My
mother named me Winter because she knew the
coldness in her own life, but she felt she found it too late. She had made herself a soft and languid
target, too easily stepped on through
illusions of warmer days. My mother named me Winter because she made herself as cold as snow, as light as
stalagmites of crystal ice, and as
bitter as the winds that ravaged through her home, once she knew
what the world could do. "If you
hold these truths outside yourself, and make them all your own, then maybe ... maybe you won't need to let them in. Maybe your heart will need never melt, in the wake of your having
frozen it."
"
Winter," she spoke - she
shook, the way she spoke - "may you never, never be
cold."