Where I live it never gets cold, not really, not life-threateningly cold. But it’s all relative. Wherever a person lives becomes a range of normal, and the fluctuations within that realm, meteorologically, psychologically, politically, become variations around the mean. Finally it’s non-hot here, a sunny morning in the 50s. Walking the dog I was reminded of what I think of as winter light, a brighter, brassier version of sunlight. The sky is a deeper blue. The nearly translucent, still-green leaves are yet somehow greener. The light echoes off the windshields of passing cars, an almost blinding brightness. It seems a brightness borne from the seasons. It strikes me in its occasional arrival as a kind of coded providence. There was an invisible line somewhere between early adulthood and middle age where I could no longer withstand the cold without complaint and a constant feeling of doom. I don’t just get cold; I feel threatened. It’s coming for my neck. It’s somehow greater than discomfort, though not quite existential. Obviously. But the winter light is the forgotten gift, the season’s lagniappe, special dispensation. I am not religious, and yet. In the cluster of gray days and clammy cars, you can warm yourself in a temporary rhombus of sunlight. I feel like an idiot talking about the weather, and yet. It’s like a blues song for the middle-aged, trying to cheer oneself up with found change. Small joys, low noise, morning sinuses clear. One shouldn’t need permission to feel happy, and yet. Nameless sparrows playing in a pothole of leftover rainwater. Relief briefly floats through like misremembered lyrics to some camp song from boyhood. I’ve got peas like a liver in my stool. And yet the song still sings. I hope there’s sun on the other side of Tuesday.