Winter has two faces, one calm, the other bright.
A very lovely friend once said that when winter came to your city, you could smell it. It is the most vivid saying about winter that I have ever heard. Even if it doesn’t snow, you can smell the coldness, the quietness, and the colours – blue and white – in the air. It feels like you can hide from the noise of the real world forever, and bury yourself in deep thoughts. Winter wakes up all your organs and makes you sensitive. When wild winds blow, they leave scars on all the time-honoured walls around the London city. They are old men telling old stories, with their faces wrinkled and their blue eyes calm and steady.
Winter urges me to think about oldness. Everyone is afraid of getting old and I am no exception. But perhaps being advanced in age is not that bad. This thought occurred to me when I saw two elegant old ladies in the Charles Dickens Museum. I heard them talking about the paintings, in perfect English accents. Dressed nicely, their grey hair shined in the lights, along with their delicately framed glasses.
The scene reminded me of a professor in my undergraduate university, who grew a big beard that was rare for a Chinese man in his thirties. In his class, he tole us that when he was visiting Chicago as a scholar, he was impressed by some elder American ‘grannies’, who dressed properly and behaved very well compared to Chinese ‘grandmothers’. So he asked his friend why there was such a difference. Surprisingly, his friend said that in fact Chinese ‘grandmothers’ were happier because these ladies enjoyed being the most respected person in an extended family even if they did not take care of their appearance, whereas old ladies in western individualistic societies were often fairly lonely, although they looked young and decent.
It is an interesting comparison but I cannot agree with him. People survive ‘winter’ in their own ways. Some people are family types while others are not, or some of them are able to enjoy both. It’s a personal choice. Maybe what most people have in common is their wishes to stay with someone they always love, miss, and care about till the end of life. It would be a great accomplishment. At least for me, if I have been thinking about what someone would look like when he or she gets old, which doesn’t often happen, it means I love this person so much.
Winter has come. Light up the house, and keep warm.
