Winter curtains
With a chill in the air and a decorating song in her heart, an old friend would climb through the toys and old furniture in her unfinished basement and pull out a big box.
“It’s time for the winter curtains,” she would say.
Back then, I’d never heard of such a thing. She wasn’t wealthy, they weren’t designer curtains. Chances are she’d made them herself. But she took down the summer curtains, rod and all, arranged them in the box and replaced them with the winter curtains. She did it every year the whole time I knew her. I suspect she is doing it still.
In cold weather I adore flannel sheets and a heavy blanket under which I can barely move my arms. I have wooden plaques that hang on my front door welcoming Spring or Summer or Hanukkah or the harvest. I cook hearty food in the winter and eat more salads in the summer.
But I have never needed, or wanted, winter curtains.
My big change was at the end of August with the onset of the new school year — a new schedule, a new direction, more focus. I don’t expect it to all to fall apart as the temperature drops, but you never know.
As a writer, what changes for you with the seasons?
What are your winter curtains?
I tend to cocoon and nest a little more in the winter. I think this also probably affects my writing in ways i haven’t yet bothered to analyze.
The Skies overhead. They’re my ‘winter curtains’.
Only one change, as we really have no seasons here in Louisiana — slippers or bare feet.
It’s all about the fashion – capris to cords. Tanks to turtlenecks! But in pulling out the sweaters and nesting inside more, I write more than I do in summer, and I think, in the quiet house, I take the writing to a deeper level once fall settles in.
Your friend must know my mother! She just today completed her fall cleaning which included changing her window decorations for a fresh look – always a triple layer look – shades covered over with sheers covered over with full length curtains topped with a valance. Drafts don’t have a snowballs chance of getting through. Me… I’m a simple blind and valance kind of girl.