Winter Roses

By Jeanette Lynes

There have been times, I confess, when I have struggled to see the good in winter. I do not skate. I do not snowboard. I don't careen down ski hills or leave parallel tracks across country trails. I couldn't tell you who won the Stanley Cup for many years. I am a regular Scrooge of winter; once the strings of twinkling lights festooned through trees or along verandas in December are snuffed out, only the long months of darkness lie ahead, or so I once believed. I have even Googled: Winter — Why?

Winter is a turning away, it seems, the earth's axis rotating away from the sun. Our planet tilts 23.3 degrees in its axis of rotation and that's why we have winter. According to science. Why were these facts not more satisfying, I mused gruffly, on those mornings when I scraped ice from the car windshield, or my weary arms and back lifted shovel after shovel of snow from the driveway? While sprinkling salt on the sidewalk, I thought about the earth turning its back on the sun; perhaps it was like two people who needed a break from each other.

This is Canada. I am supposed to embrace winter, not turn away.

Scrooge had thin blue lips. One day, after scraping the ice off the car's rearview mirror, I caught my own reflection in the round silver. My own lips were set in a tight straight line and looked suspiciously — well, blue. I was cold. I'd been scraping ice for a long time. A large stone of silence had wedged itself inside my house and neither hot ginseng drinks nor reality television shows that ended well, in weight loss or romance, could dislodge it. Since I have already confessed I was a blue-lipped curmudgeon in a toque, snow shovel or ice scraper or salt bag in hand, I will tell you these were dark days. He and I had been growing apart, and the fact that this was happening gradually, over a period of time, a winter of its own, a long, unwinding heartbreak, did not make it less difficult.

One morning, though, after an ice storm had raged for hours, sunlight flooded the old maple in the front yard until it resembled a diamond tree from a storybook and hundreds of little ice-chimes tinkled at the tips of its long graceful branches. That same morning, the seed catalogue from Prince Edward Island arrived in the mail. It was a Saturday, a holiday from scraping. I spent the day with that catalogue, growing excited while making notes and mapping the garden I would plant. I would need to start the seeds indoors and not so very long from then, either. Winter's days sped ahead as I waited for the seeds and plants to arrive. Mostly I had chosen familiar things, like tomato plants and giant marigolds. But then an inner restlessness overtook me; I went out on a limb and ordered hellebores. Hellebores? What an unpleasant name! How could something with that name be beautiful? But these evergreen plants, early bloomers, according to the catalogue, were also called Lenten roses or winter roses, which reassured me as I wrote the cheque to the mail order company.

The winter roses were the loveliest green bouquet against their white backdrop, their blooms brazenly early and fresh as apple blossoms. The first time I saw them I thought I was hallucinating, but they were there, those winter roses.

Winter taught me to see. My garden was not, after all, a withered white wasteland during the cold months. The dappled light boogied like a disco ball over the chickadees flicking around the birdfeeder. The flowerpots I'd left outside for something to look at wore adorable domed snowy caps. Then there was the fence with its long white brow, the arbor latticed in frosting, occasionally a rare red flash of cardinal, and soon, very soon, roses would rise from the snow.

Scrooge did not stay Scrooge; if he had, it would have been a terrible story. And I do not live there anymore. Difficult as it is to leave behind a garden we love, we carry with us the knowledge that we created beauty in that place. I no longer turn away. Each year the earth rotates slowly away from the sun. It brings a new patience and makes me a believer; for if roses can spring from the snow, what else might be possible?

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