Wallowing in the Winter Doldrums

“Don’t I remember crisp, clear-skied and sunny winter days when I spent most of the time outdoors sledding and building snow forts?” my mother-of-toddler daughter asked me not too long ago.
Yup. It seems to me that there were lots of days like that, when kids from toddlers to teens rolled around in pristine snow banks until the sun went down — much too early.
The sun still sets too early, but it doesn’t seem to matter these days. It’s dismal, dreary. Not enough snow to be fun; just enough to be sloppy.
There’s no sun. I’m eating too much chocolate. Eating too much.
So today I hauled myself out and drove down to the New York State Museum for its annual Gem, Mineral, and Fossil show. I’m not into minerals, but I know from past years that sometimes there are vendors selling interesting jewelry.
I by-passed the jewelry this time and wound up buying several “fossil gastropods” — 80 million year old mollusks similar to our modern day snail, or so the tags tell me.
I have in my hand something that lived 80 million years ago. Mollusks actually date back to more than 500 million years ago, so the ones I bought are relatively not very old at all.
But they’re old enough. And so am I. At least that’s how I’m feeling on this dark day that I mostly slept away, except for my journey that ended with finding those delicately etched stone cold fossils that I’ve decided to use in some sort of ceremony when my group of women friends meet on the day of the Spring Equinox.
Wouldn’t it be nice to think that, 80 million years from now, what’s fossilized of me will inspire someone to create something — something to conjure back her 5 billion year old sun.

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