May, Katherine. Wintering: the Power of Reset and Retreat in Difficult Times. Riverhead Books, 2020.
I feel like this book comes from a place of privilege. How many of us can safely leave employment and snuggle into a season of wintering? I learned to manage my expectations in regards to what I am hoping to “get” out of reading Wintering. I found myself asking what is the difference between an entertaining story and one from which you are supposed to greatly benefit? I want to call Wintering a beautifully written memoir with a message and leave it at that. To think there is a self-help promise was almost too much to ask. Otherwise, if I don’t just call it a memoir, Wintering will be nothing more than a book with an identity crisis. Self-help or self-story? More of the latter is my honest opinion. It is a memoir about navigating a difficult season, if you take wintering in the literal sense.
Lines I liked, “But then, that’s what grief is – a yearning for that one last moment of contact that would settle everything” (p 60), “Even at the ripe old age of forty-one, I’m shy about asking if anyone’s free, lest I make myself look unpopular” (p 129), and my favorite, “My blood sparkled in my veins” (p 180).
A few comments about the favorite quotes. Everyone asked, if you had one more moment with a loved one, what would you say? It’s as if the questioner knows the answer to solving the mystery of regret is to have that one last moment of contact. What is wrong with not having anywhere to go (and no one to ask)? And lastly, I was a member of the Polar Bear Club in my high school days. We didn’t swim year round, but we did jump in Songo pond every spring, just after the thaw.
Setlist: ABBA, “Silent Night”, and “Wichita Lineman”.
~*LunaSea*~ 