Resilient Gulls
Whitsable, England, where Katherine May lives, is a coastal city, which means it has a variety of gulls. After the movie Finding Nemo, gulls are forever in my mind labeled as “rats with wings.” Their call is somewhere between a laugh and a cry. They fish in the sea and scavenge from tourists and other birds. They don’t migrate, staying put, whatever the weather.
We humans are not so stationary. When trouble comes, we either run from it or seek to defeat it with a mighty blow. We haven’t learned the saving gift of steering into the tailspin.
Katherine May’s version of steering into her winter means literally jumping into cold water. In a wetsuit.
She finds a friend with whom she can swim in the cold sea year-round. They start with three minutes (okay, two minutes, forty-five seconds) and work their way up to half an hour.
By embracing winter, rather than trying to push it away, we have both found a way to keep going. … By doing a resilient thing, we feel more resilient.”
May finds she is not alone. She interviews a Danish woman who has used cold water therapy to treat bipolar. When medication didn’t work, cold water did, along with a variety of other lifestyle changes, including learning to say no. The woman is not cured, but she is happy. She tells May, “Keeping well is almost a full-time job. But I have a wonderful life.”
In January I had the first of two oral surgeries. I expected this small wintering to include pain, but I did not expect the food restrictions to be so wide-ranging and to last so long. Especially hard was being denied the comfort of hot tea, hot soup, and hot oatmeal during winter. It does not sound pleasant to sit outside, in 22-degree weather, and drink cold tea.
But oh, my friends! It felt so good!
It’s what my recovering mouth wanted, and so I began to love it, the way May loves swimming in cold water. She is joined by human friends and by black-headed and herring gulls. All of them “let the cold unburden us of our own personal winters, just for a few moments.”
When my surgical restrictions lift, I do resume hot liquids, but I have become more aware of this inner tailspin that needs daily attention. In the shower I put my head under the cold water, even on a winter morning. I stay there as long as I can.
Gulls
Solstice to Epiphany stretches thin
I am here, and you are not, again.
The gulls lift up their melancholy cry
As the stars fade and the sun meets the sky.
Read and Write with Us
Each week I am writing a poem drawn from Wintering and from Edward Thomas’ Thaw. Won’t you write your own winter quatrain too? If you like, try your own resilient gulls poem.
We’re reading Wintering on a schedule that follows the calendar, from fall to winter to spring.
February 9: Hot Water & Starlings (Prologue-September-October-November)
February 16: Cold Water & Gulls (December-January-February)
February 23: Thaw & Lapwing (March-Late March)
Photo by Bureau of Land Management, Creative Commons, via Flickr. Post by Megan Willome.
Browse previous Wintering book club posts
I loved this book. As soon as I finished, I began reading it again.”
—David Lee Garrison, author of Playing Bach in the D. C. Metro
- Perspective: The Two, The Only: Calvin and Hobbes - December 16, 2022
- Children’s Book Club: A Very Haunted Christmas - December 9, 2022
- By Heart: ‘The night is darkening round me’ by Emily Brontë - December 2, 2022
HCB says
First, I apologize if this is too negative. I’m new to book clubs and I don’t know the format.
I found your piece here on these chapters nice, but also a little comforting. You skipped December and January and went straight to February. I have to admit that I had to force myself through December and January. I really enjoyed and cruised through the first chapters for last week’s posts, but this week’s was more of a labor. I found myself wondering about May’s (the author, not the month) personal winter. Did I skip something? Did I miss something in the reading? Her husband’s health scare seems to be over. Her own health scare seems to be over. She decided to leave her job, but I don’t think we ever get an explanation for that. It seems the only trial she is currently facing is homeschooling her child after terrible bullying. I was reading December and January thinking, “What happened to her personal winter?” Where is she in this metaphorical journey? At one point in “Hunger” she said, “I watched H go out to work this morning like all of life isn’t turned upside down.” At that point, I couldn’t figure out what was turned upside down for her. I needed her to maybe give less winter in the world description and explain more of what was going on in her personal winter.
In February, she still wasn’t giving us the kind of personal winter she described in the first few chapters, but the analogies of snow and water made more sense to me. Here are a couple of highlights:
1. Snow: “I think again of what Hanne told me: the way that snow draws you close to your family, forcing you to find moments of collective leisure in close quarters. The summer only disperses us. In winter, we find a shared language of comfort: candles, ice cream, coffee. Sauna. Fresh laundry.” I like the idea of this benefit of winter. In spring and summer we might feel empowered to go it alone, but it’s often when we come to the end of ourselves that we find we need others and we are more likely to lean into it.
2. Cold Water: “This isn’t about you getting fixed,” he said. “This is about you living the best life you can with the parameters that you have.” YES! This is great. My life doesn’t have to look like the best parts of my friends’ lives displayed on their social media pages. It doesn’t have to look like I dreamed it would look. But I can still do what I can to make it the best it can be within the reality I am living.
3. Cold Water: I thought this passage was interesting given her mention of having Asperger’s — “I, who generally prefer to do everything alone if I can possibly help it, came to see how this was made possible only be a contract between us. The fear of stepping into the water–of even getting to the beach in the first place–never subsided, but having a partner in crime made it harder to avoid.” I think this goes back to the first thing I noticed in the “Snow” chapter about needing others during our winter–if for accountability as anything else.
I don’t have a poem this week. I’m not much of a poet. But these are the thoughts I recorded as I read through these chapters.
Megan Willome says
HCB, thanks for bringing your questions along with the things you liked.
This book is non-linear. You didn’t miss anything—there’s just a lot of details she chooses not to share in favor of sharing lots of details about things like snow.
I like how you picked up on the way she is moving toward community in these chapters. It looks different for her than for me (For example, I’m more comfortable in churches than she is). But I love that she points us toward a wintering that is not done solo.
L.L. Barkat says
HCB, you are doing swimmingly with the virtual book club format. Not to worry (or apologize 🙂 ).
I commented below, as to what I think is going on with May and her lack of personal details. But I also had wanted to add that the journalism/memoir mashup genre tends to work this way and some writers manage to keep the memoir thread going just a little bit stronger along the way. I have in mind Rebecca Solnit, as in The Faraway Nearby.
https://www.tweetspeakpoetry.com/category/the-faraway-nearby-2/
As for you being much of a poet—a warm and generous welcome to the place where poets find themselves. Poets who thought there wasn’t muchness. You have muchness. I can sense it in all your other words. A little winter. A little rearranging. A little attention to dormice. I believe you will find poetry more and more where you least expect it. A first sentence. A phrase. A cry. Each will be a sliver of light to write by.
Debra Hale Shelton says
While I liked May’s book, I also had expected and even wanted to know more of her husband’s illness and recovery. While she mentions some of the travails facing her, her husband, and their son, I think she tends to focus more on how she and people in general cope with the challenges..
I’ve always liked winter. It’s long been my favorite season. Now living in Arkansas, I greatly miss Chicago’s winters. I love snow but not the ice we get here. I’d rather be cold than hot any day. The one thing I hate about winter is the darkness, the short days. The darkness of winter is, of course, one of the topics May writes about extensively.
I don’t have a poem yet but may try to write one.
I have belonged to a book club where I live for more than a decade but don’t get to go to many meetings. I like that an online group allows for our varied schedules.
Megan Willome says
Yes, May keeps many secrets.
As a person with a January birthday, I’ve always loved winter, but living in Central Texas, I don’t get much of one.
I really like how May writes about darkness, inviting us in. Now, when we approach the summer solstice and it’s light early, I miss my long nights.
So glad this format is working for you, Debra.
HCB says
Thank you for mentioning that you like winter. Somehow, in reading this book, I almost forgot that I love winter. I see that you now live in a warmer climate than Chicago, but there are things about winter you miss, but you don’t miss the darkness. I think this is probably an important point. Darkness can be difficult. Seasonal Affective Disorder is certainly a real thing. While this cold can be difficult, the heat of summer, as you point out, can be just as difficult. But the amount of light in the summer is perhaps a bit of an equalizer. Seventeen years ago, I almost got a job in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I was actually kind of excited about the winter and the mild summers, but the darkness in winter and the constant cloud cover in Grand Rapids intimidated me a bit. I heard you go to work in the dark and go home in the dark. That scared me. I wasn’t sure how I or my family would handle that.
So in our own personal seasons of “winter” in our lives, I wonder what the metaphor for “light” is. Is it spirituality? Taking care of ourselves physically? Mentally? Socially? Emotionally? How do we make sure we are getting the metaphorical sunlight we need while we are experiencing the cold?
For me, spirituality is key, followed closely by being socially engaged with friends. I find the more I vulnerably share with my friends the more they can relate to me, I can relate to them, and we can help each other.
Megan Willome says
HCB, I think May’s rambling approach to wintering allows us to consider a multitude of ways in which we might winter well and find light. I agree that it requires a multipronged approach. And that it has to involve people beyond our four walls. I’ve found my regular acquaintances are almost as important as my dear friends.
L.L. Barkat says
Funny. I didn’t realize what you’d done until I prepped the post for inbox delivery for our $5 and up patrons. (Hot Water / Cold Water. Starlings / Gulls. Love it!). This does show how moving things from one context to another can often help us find nuances we’d otherwise missed.
This dynamic feels like a good thing to remember in regards to wintering, as well. Moving from one season to another in our lives can sharpen things for us. We see what we might have otherwise missed. We go in directions we might otherwise not have gone. This isn’t always something we welcome, but if we can take the dormice’s approach (name from the French for sleep—dormir, I just learned here: https://www.treehugger.com/things-you-didnt-know-about-dormice-4868735 ), then perhaps that helps:
we wake to the moment and find we need to rearrange things a bit for this hard season of rest or cold or darkness.
What’s in the rearranging? That in itself could take a book for each of us, sometimes. And I think it’s what May is doing here, and why it feels like she dropped the ball for the reader. She isn’t retreading the ground of “this is my personal winter and here are the details” so much as she’s focusing on the rearranging during a time that would make anyone feel like… oh, gosh, are we still here? Is it still winter? Has nothing fundamental changed in the details of my situation?
So I think that’s what might be happening for those of us like HCB who would like more of the details. KM possibly felt she had nothing significantly new to say. Yet there she was. Still in winter.
“Solstice to Epiphany stretches thin
I am here, and you are not, again.”
And can’t we all relate to this from time to time? Nothing has changed much in the details. Here we are. Still in winter. I do like the focusing on small rearrangements then. It’s a form of hope and maybe insight. Sometimes these small rearrangements are as slim as the “Goodnight” poem. Sometimes they are bigger small things.
I like that you are writing poems, Megan. They contain worlds. Turns in the dark. Dormice style.
HCB says
“Moving from one season to another in our lives can sharpen things for us.” Totally agree. I never–well, almost never–learn during good times. It is the strain against life that helps me grow, if I let it.
Peach trees are a big deal where I live, and they require a certain number of “chilling hours” below freezing to be the right sweetness. They need to be strained by winter in order to produce the sweetest fruit.
Someone, years ago, taught me to add something critical to my prayers. When I’m praying for a difficult or even hopeless situation, as I ask God to do something, the most earnest part of my prayer is to make the pain of the situation count. Someone died? Make it count. Someone is suffering with illness or heartbreak? Make it count. Don’t let the pain be in vain. If we have to experience it, God, make it count.
Megan Willome says
I have to admit, I was rather pleased when I stumbled upon the whole water-bird nexus. I always get inspired by discovering a framework for organization.
Thank you for your kind words about my “dormice” poems. I absolutely love Edward Thomas’ “Thaw” poem: it’s practically perfect. So I wanted to use it as a form for my own.
Bethany R. says
Everyone, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts and hearts here. Such enlightening and enriching conversation.
Megan Willome says
Bethany, I’m so happy to know you’re reading along.
Laura Lynn Brown says
I’m coming late to this post, and haven’t read the book, but Megan, I love your discovery that cold tea on a colder morning actually tasted good and was just what your recovering mouth wanted. I love, too, the idea of the daily tailspin that needs attention, and the link to the poem about steering into one.
I’ve had to turn down the heat in several arenas, too, and have also discovered the aliveness in a cold shower stream. I’m thinking of the phrase “bracing cold” … I always thought of it as a sort of sting, an unwelcome wake-up, but now I see it more generously, with the metaphor of bracing as something that provides structure, holds one up.
Megan Willome says
Laura, I like the generous way you are making me think about the word “bracing.”
There is something about cold water … a sting that removes the sting.