Consistency

Today it’s actually snowing. You would think that’s normal for winter time, but these last many years, we haven’t had much snow. When I think back to my childhood, it seems in winter it was always snowing. I remember meter high piles, snow caves, snowball fights, snowmen and hands frozen blue. Now there’s next to no snow. When we moved to Århus two years ago, there was a weekend with snow. We took the kids sleighing, pushing them down the steep hill in their bob sleighs, they were laughing so much. But it was only one weekend then the snow was gone.
When I think about it, the same goes for summer. In my childhood, summer was endless sun, trips to the beach, running around in shorts and t-shirts, getting tanned in the first few days of summer. Now the sunny days are few in summer – it’s all rain and wind.
The four seasons in Denmark aren’t so consistent anymore. Or is it my memory? My thoughts are dragging towards global warming, but I don’t want to write about that. I want to write about consistency, about how things change, about how you change as time goes by.
I have changed a lot; even in the past few years I have changed. When I think back to childhood, to teenage years and even to my early thirties, I have changed. I am not the same person anymore.Or maybe I am the same, but how I think about myself has changed. I don’t have the same opinions or the same thoughts, even. Life is utterly different now. And of course it is. I have kids now, I am married, I work full-time and keep up an everyday with packed lunches, driving the kids to kindergarten, walking the dog, cleaning and cooking dinner besides work. There is little time left for philosophical wondering, let alone writing about it.
The four season have changed, they are less simple, and so am I. Less simple. As you get older, life gets more complex. You take things into consideration that you didn’t even know existed when you were twenty, or a kid. Is that what they call wisdom? Or is it some kind of default complexity that kicks in as you learn more about the world.
Some days I wish for simplicity. I wish for meter high snow; my only concern being whether I can build a snowman before mom calls me in for dinner. I see this simplicity in my children and I adore it.
I wish for consistency; winter being winter and children being children. I wish for a simpler world. Maybe it is already so, the complexity being only in my mind.
I look at my kids, so beautiful, and outside the window, the world is powdered white with newly fallen snow. I should start thinking about dinner, trying to keep energy up so I can write on my new novel tonight. Yes, I’ll do that. That’s simple. For one thing, this is consistency: I do love writing.