If one measures accomplishments in tangible output, as our capitalist society is wont to do, my summer and early fall weren’t incredibly fruitful. As a productivity-worshipping perfectionist whose self-worth has traditionally been based on such standards, I feel obliged to remind you that my lack of much to show for these months was by design: I’d made a deliberate choice, or rather a series of deliberate choices, to prioritize doing stuff and having experiences over creating stuff and having breakdowns, and I was remarkably successful in that endeavour. I travelled, roamed the city, and put almost 1,000 additional kilometres on my power wheelchair. I kept sewing and writing, but just enough to satisfy those itches, no more, no less. (No breakdowns to report, either!)
And like a good Torontonian, I spent as many daylight hours as humanly possible outside since it felt wrong to be indoors if it wasn’t raining and the thermometer registered more than, say, twenty degrees Celsius. Is this a Canadian thing? I don’t know. I do know, however, that the promise of seemingly endless cold makes every warm summer minute precious, something to soak up and hold on to and hoard in preparation for winter. This is why patio season here extends well beyond what citizens of more hospitable climes might consider reasonable. This might also be why on Sunday, the first snow day of the year, I spotted several people wearing clogs (with socks, but clogs all the same) and three others wearing windbreakers.
I’ll give these shivering fools the benefit of the doubt and assume that they were as caught by surprise as I was, and who can blame us? Even if this is the Great White North or whatever, snow this early—not a few errants snowflakes, but over ten centimetres in my neighbourhood—isn’t the norm in this part of Ontario. Indeed, Toronto hasn’t seen double-digit accumulation in November since 1987, and even then, it was on November 30, so practically December. As I also learned five minutes ago, “the average date for the first 5 cm accumulation at Pearson Airport is Dec. 12, while the median date for the first 10 cm total is Dec. 27” (thanks, CityNews!). I can sense myself falling into a research trap so will now stop Googling weather stats and trends, but you get it.
In any case, given the above-cited data and how abnormally warm September and October were, it was hard to believe this past weekend that the weather forecast could be anything but a not-funny joke. My husband and I therefore made plans to go downtown on Sunday to run some errands and see a movie, figuring that we could handle a little snow on the very off chance it materialized. The light flurry when we left the house was our first hint that we had misjudged the predictive marvels of modern meteorology. By the time we emerged from our matinee, it was coming down hard.
Whether we intended to or not, it was important psychologically, I think, to embrace the premature return of winter by venturing out in it as a reminder that a) it’s not a huge deal, and b) I actually kind of love it. My power wheelchair can handle moderate amounts of snow, ice, and slush, and the sidewalks tend to be cleared reasonably quickly except in the case of days-long storms. In other words, I won’t be trapped inside without break until the spring thaw brings more patio weather. More significantly, the idea of being stuck in my building doesn’t plunge me straight into panic mode as it once did. Quite the opposite: indeed, I’m excited to have an “excuse” to spend more time working on the projects that I neglected over the summer months, and I’ve shown myself that I’m very, very good at filling my days—too good, in fact. Gone is my “how the eff will I make it to dinner without dying of boredom” era. Here is my “how the eff will I get to the many, many things on my to-do list” one. This is a common consequence of getting older, I suppose; in my case, it’s also evidence that I’m becoming emotionally and physically stronger.
On Sunday evening, post-film, my husband and I sat down to talk about what we want to do over the holidays this year. It seemed an opportune moment as our delusions of an eternal Canadian summer had been shattered during our outing by stores peddling gaudy Santas and tartan bows and a kid declaring “It’s just like Christmas!!!” as he licked snow from his red mitts. We’re flying to BC at the end of November, and while the idea of going away for Christmas is appealing on one level, it’s highly unappealing and impractical on another since we’ll have recently returned from a trip and are saving for a few bigger ones that are in the works for 2026. Although I don’t need or want an enormous celebration (the ghost of past Christmas-crazed me would be horrified; the non-ghost me of the present and the maybe-ghost me of the future are extremely glad I’ve somehow moved beyond that “desperate to distract myself from an otherwise miserable life” phase), I remain fundamentally the same person, meaning that I’m incapable of truly relaxing until there’s a plan and that I require a good dose of certainty to function.
Warm on the couch, staring out the window at lazily falling snowflakes illuminated by the lights we didn’t bother taking down last January, we soon realized how much we’re looking forward to hunkering down for winter. We’ll thus have a quiet holiday puttering around our apartment, working on projects together and apart, going on day trips here and there, and taking advantage of all the GTA has to offer. It’ll be festive in its own way, and it’ll be nice to get out when possible, but we’ll also hope for some inclement weather so that there’s all the more reason to cozy up at home.
If my weather app is to believed, it’s supposed to warm up this week. I’m willing to risk incurring the wrath of my fellow Torontonians by admitting that I’m sad about it. Although I’ll try to remember that I’m allowed to stay home sewing and writing and reading and organizing my storage locker or simply existing even if it’s above freezing out, I’ll inevitably lapse back a bit. Old habits die hard, and fall doesn’t last forever, right?!? This taste of what’s inescapably to come has nonetheless made me eager for the months in which a quick trip on my wheelchair from my building to the subway station feels like an interminable bobsled ride fully naked in the subarctic.
With any luck, then, it’ll be a long, cold winter. Please quote me on that in February when I’m stir crazy and yearn to be in a park chugging an iced latte.
De Morbo Sacro: Life and/with Epilepsy 