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Highlands Today

Irony: It's Life Seasoned To Perfection

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Joyce Minor

Published: January 27, 2008

As women, we're supposed to savor the "seasons" of our lives, which, ironically, have more to do with what's going on in our heads than with weather or age.

My teen years were one long "season" of angst. Fall started with the school year, but for me it was more "sweater season" than fall. Does this bulky knit make me look fat? And more "football season" than autumn. I'll just die if I don't have a date for homecoming.

Winter was the season of holidays. Not another Christmas pageant! Even God must be bored with this. And it was the season of basketball. I'm going to the game even if I do have six hours of homework. Winter was also one, continuous frizzy-hair nightmare. I'd rather be bald!

Spring signaled the school year winding down, and final exams loomed like a spectre. Somebody just shoot me, preferably before third period. Summer officially started, not with the solstice, but with the last day of school, which was also the first day of "swimsuit season." It's not bad enough that I never tan; now my white shoulders have zits.

Somehow, I survived the teenage season of my life, which actually lasted through college and the first few years of finding a career. Then came the season of motherhood.

As a young mother, life revolved around the kids, and so did the angst. Summer was mosquito season, not to mention heat rash and fire ants. I should buy stock in Calamine. Fall was the season of expenses – school clothes, books, band instruments, sports equipment, music lessons, and field trips. Room mother? They should call it money mother.

Winter days were a blizzard of activity. While I stuffed wiggling, giggling bodies into snowsuits and boots, they outgrew them before I could get them zipped. I'm not sure, but I think my wedding ring came off in Matthew's mitten. Winter nights dragged endlessly while I stuffed Tylenol and antibiotics into coughing, feverish bodies that didn't fall asleep till time to get up and do it all over. God, please let them giggle again.

Spring, when it finally arrived, was the season of wildflower scrapbooks and allergy shots, butterfly nets and rock collections, raincoats and science fair projects, jump ropes and skinned knees, bicycles and bruised egos. This isn't multi-tasking, it's manic-tasking!

Still, looking back, I wouldn't change one moment of one "season" gone by. I look at family pictures from those years and sometimes I wish those little cherubs could come back to visit, just for a season.

But, I try not to focus on the past. Now that I have an empty nest, my life should finally be about me again, and no angst. This is the season to focus on my body, my needs, my collections, and my projects. Right? Yeah, right. I need to focus on saving my money so I can drag my body to the drugstore and collect my prescriptions.

Good thing I've migrated to Florida where there really are no "seasons." How's that for irony?

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