Elky Handler

 

Sometimes, winter is mild. Temperatures hover in the 40s, and snow is an annual flurry or two. School is never canceled because of the weather; and while children may thrive on snow days, their parents who have to work either way certainly prefer to drive there without first excavating their vehicles.

 

Sometimes, winter is…winter. Cold. Weekly snow showers. Monthly storms. Upper respiratory and sinus infections. Cranky cars and crankier kids. Crankiest adults trying to discipline the former and comfort the latter. Sometimes winter is brutal.

 

Remember the recent two or three consecutive mild winters? Our boys wore short sleeves all through November. Children donned snow gear mainly as a dress-up activity. My daughter lost her third pair of mittens, and it was only mid-December. I figured I’d buy her the fourth when they predict snow. But no one did. December became January, then February, and the snow shovels gathered dust while my trusty extendable clear-snow-off-the-van device (which officially resides in my trunk) bent in half beneath the bikes that I kept bringing to the shop for repair. Winter flowed seamlessly into spring and then summer, and the sun smiled down on us.

 

This winter was average, wasn’t it? Cold days and colder days, some freezing days, some snowstorms. Our snow shovel and tub of rock salt felt neither neglected nor overworked; they seemed quite pleased with themselves if you’d judge by their faithfulness. My second grader actually held onto her third pair of gloves (until January; then they eloped, and we dug out last year’s gloves. Rather miraculously, I might add). My ninth grader enjoyed a snowstorm after which he earned nearly $150 (from his tzaddik of a menahel) for shoveling his yeshivah campus.

 

Purim brought springtime, and Pesach brought sunshine, and now summer shines in as we smile with the sun, all that much more grateful. This year, we earned our summer.

 

Sometimes winter is brutal. Remember 1996? 2010? Others…? Flurries were almost daily, snowstorms were weekly, blizzards were monthly—if not more often. Snow drifts piled high enough to completely hide anything from lawn chairs (gulp… I’ll bring them inside next time) to fire hydrants, and I vividly recall one particularly large drift that boasted a picket sign warning, “CAR BELOW; DO NOT PLOW!” And you didn’t necessarily have time to dig yourself out of a blizzard before the next storm came.

 

Such winters were liberally sprinkled with power outages and supplies shortages and altercations over parking spots. Nice weather meant it was only raining, but then a polar vortex would step in, plating the streets with sheets of black ice. And through it all was the perhaps irrational, yet ever present fear; would summer ever come? Will day camps close for snow days? Purim brought snowstorms and Pesach brought flurries, and when Shavuos finally brought sunshine, we all went out waving welcome banners.

 

Those summers, we couldn’t get enough of the sun, and we thanked Heaven for every minute. Because we’d wondered for months if summer would come, and it came. It always comes. All that much more beautiful for the cold preceding it.

 

Yes. Winter is sometimes brutal. But summer always follows winter. And summer is always beautiful.

 

It’s easy to find beauty in a mild winter or even an average one. Winter fruits and fuzzy sweaters, cozy blankets and fireplaces, fluffy down coats with only cute little faces peeking out… Yards that look like white Shabbos tablecloths with a tree or two as leichter and a Kiddush cup bush… Houses made of gingerbread with snowy frosted gables and icicles so perfect they hardly seem real… Children shrieking merrily while sledding down a hillside, only to make their giggly way back up to start the whole thing over again… Spiraling steam from mugs of coffee or hot chocolate that warm your hands while the company warms your heart… We have to see the beauty in the winter. How else would we prevent the atrophy of our ayin tovah muscles, after all?

 

But sometimes, winter is brutal. Can I enjoy a pungent orange when there’s horror outside? Do I notice what I’m wearing as trees buckle, snap, and fall to the ground in a heap of devastation? Can I hear the sound of children’s laughter over the sound of bucking boughs and wailing winds and hail heavily hitting the ground?

 

Can I wake up to smell the coffee if my heart is somnolent…burrowed beneath the blankets of bereavement, hiding from the agony of wakefulness, longing for sleep so I can return to my nightmares because reality is worse?

 

Winter can be brutal. Too brutal to bear. Too brutal to fathom. Too brutal to process. Brutal enough to completely obfuscate the possibility of a beautiful summer. But summer always follows winter. And summer is always beautiful.

 

Sometimes, winter is brutal. And when winter’s brutality wholly eclipses its beauty…then there’s only one way forward. I know that there are always choices, surely. I can choose to lie down and sleep forever, enjoying the nightmares. Or I can scream and yell and fight the storms with every weapon in my arsenal—a losing battle, indeed, but there’s always a choice.

 

Still…there’s only one way forward: toward summer. This winter is brutal, but summer follows winter. I’ll think of the summer. Because summer is always beautiful. I’ll tell it to myself over and over; if need be, I’ll host hourly DMCs with the woman in the glass to remind her. If I’m not on speaking terms with me, I’ll make the conversations quarter-hourly until we’ve made up, and once we’re friends again, I’ll bring it up once more.

 

Summer follows every winter. And summer is always beautiful. Brutal winters do have beauty. Beauty in chessed, in achdus, in solidarity and love. Beauty in chizuk and hisorerus, in Torah and teshuvah, in emunah and bitachon and the knowledge that Hashem has a Master Plan beyond my mortal grasp.

 

The beauty is there. I know it, I see it, and sometimes I can feel it. Sometimes it’s hard to feel it. And that’s when I whisper, “Summer follows winter. And summer is always beautiful.”

 

It was Friday afternoon, and we’d just buried our beautiful bechor. And then someone told me the Rosh Yeshivah wants to speak to me. The Rosh Yeshivah wants to speak to me…? Before I had time to register this unfathomable phenomenon, Rav Yeruchem Olshin was there, barely two feet away, facing me. And the Rosh Yeshivah was giving me a brachah. A brachah that Hashem will bring us joy to match the pain.

 

We buried our child with pain we didn’t know it was possible to feel. With horror we’d never dreamed existed. With gaping holes in our hearts and rivers of tears…and with a brachah for joy to match the pain. Joy we won’t have known it was possible to feel. Summer must follow winter. And summer is always beautiful.