Summer Baby

The Scottish Highlands are a lot like me. In the summer: expansive, glowing, elegant, bright, beloved, warm and welcoming. In the winter: bitter, sharp, dark, biting, with gales howling at the windows (of the heart, in my case).

I am thinking this thought on a bus, rushing happily through this greenlit world with my eyes closed and my skin warm. It is the kind of day I wish we would have every day, the kind of day I wait for all year and which is always marred only by the grumbling of others. The bus is filled with pink people who long for rain, despite complaining about the rain 20 days out of the last 30. They refuse to be happy; I am the personification of peace and joy. I am high on vitamin D.

Nevertheless, the thought nags: summer will not last. One day soon they will get their rain and I will be bereft, with only the memory of the sun on my skin. Will I survive another winter here?