Breaking a Habit.

By the standard of recent weeks it’s been an unusually temperate sort of day today, with only light breezes and some hazy sunshine. It was easy to believe that spring really was underway, and I spent the afternoon getting the greenhouse into shape in anticipation of a time when I can be a little more certain. And it brought an unfamiliar experience in its wake.

I was sitting by the fire in my living room this evening feeling uncomfortably warm. I don’t remember when I last felt uncomfortably warm in any part of this house, so I decided that now would be a good time to stop having fires.

Like most habits, it will be a difficult one to break. The making of the fire has been a daily marker since late November, and it’s been a pleasant one because it involved putting heat into a room that would otherwise have been uncomfortably cold. I’ll miss it for a little while. I will.

On the other hand, it will also be another sort of marker. It will be both a practical and symbolic recognition of the fact that winter is now over. Even if there’s more cold weather to come, it won’t amount to the raising of some hibernal Lazarus, but will be only the ghost of winter haunting the corridors of spring. How unlike me to be so trusting of the unknowable.