Winter’s Comfort (& a Secret Benelux Holiday)

I felt like I was dressing to be launched into space, instead of a hop to the Friday market. For most of my life, cold weather meant a sweater, maybe a jacket. Here in the Dutch winter I want those just to reach for the heater in the morning. I know many of you are used to this and more, but it’s been a revelation to me.

Revealed also is the truth of a fact I’ve long surmised, and now feel for myself in every abused inch of frosty face that the coat does not cover. Countries like this, arms held close for long stretches of short days, are the best places for seasons. Here lives summer’s heaven, emphasized by its wintry parameters. I can feel it ahead, growing behind my back as I turn in orbit.

Years ago someone said “I wish there was a place that was always warm and sunny, not hot not cold, all year round” and I felt like a spy from Eden, guarding the secret of my hometown, certified as the best climate in North America for exactly those particulars. But when June came to Oakland it was mostly a matter of school years finishing, not much more. My shorts lived next to jeans all year round.

Not here. I don’t even know where I put my shorts, and seasons are not concepts on a calendar. Here their change will be marked by a holiday, a secret holiday, marked on no calendar since no one knows when it will happen. It will announce itself between 8 and 9:00 some morning, somewhere in April perhaps, trumpeted by brazen calves and ambitious knees pushing pedals on their way to something Dutch.

“Rokjesdaag” they call it, Mini Skirts Day, when a critical mass of women (always the sages among us) decide the season has changed and dress accordingly. It’s like Mary Poppins’ windvane, but sexy. After the long press of winter, it’s not just the shift of a season, it’s the emergence of exultation kept private for these muffled months.

I’m dreaming of rokjesdag, not out of lechery or thermal envy, but for the joy of seasonality itself, and participating in it in this beautiful corner of the world. (Not that I’m going to buy a miniskirt, in case that sounded overly enthusiastic.) And walking back from the market just now, where good Dutch humor is still crackling despite the gloves and scarves, I realized this summer will have an added layer of delight.

Not only will I be celebrating European vernal joy this year, but I get to share it with whoever joins my Benelux tour, which will run in the headiest days of August in this land of big bold smiles. Winter’s mist rose into rorschach forms of terraces where we’ll sip through our Trappist pints, the canals where fowl will paddle alongside us, and the towers from which we’ll watch the long summer sunsets ease through their colors.

With that thought in mind, these short afternoons of long winter hours do not feel oppressive, they feel like balance, preparation for their counterparts ahead. They’re saying more rough weather next week, but it’s not menacing when I trust in the summer paths ahead.

Happy wintering and happy travels!