Embracing the Joys of Winter and Grown Kids

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Living where we do, it’s all too easy to hibernate in winter. Between below zero weather, wind, waking in darkness and coming returning from work in darkness, it’s tough to want to want to go anywhere other than the couch in the evenings. Still, there are joys in winter.

Two plus one equals three

A couple of years ago, we downsized and moved near the city lakes. We rented a two-bedroom place until we could find our dream spot, thinking it would do. For the two of us.

But our middle son (who had just graduated from college), came with the package. Just until he’d found a job and saved the money to go it on his own.

Of course, there were days this felt like a mixed bag. We were ready to try out this new stage of life where it was just us. Our youngest was still in college out-of-state, and our eldest was already out on his own. We’d done the work of downsizing, and it hadn’t been easy. We were ready. But we had our middle son. In our second bedroom.

Reset

When I got my mind around the fact it wasn’t going to be the two of us, but rather the three of us, I found myself starting to see all the plusses of having our middle son around. First of all, he’s a delight. Most of the time.

And second of all, as kids do — at any age — he made us see the wonder in some things we’d long since lost the feeling of wonder for. It may sound crazy, but one day as we were eating dinner he said, “We should have bowls.” This stopped us cold. We had an array of bowls in the cabinet.

Bowls were a new way of eating dinner

But he meant, we should eat ‘Bowls,’ as in Chipotle-type Bowls. A meal in a bowl, instead of on a plate. So I went out and bought some bright bowls with some lemons painted on the sides, and we started to have Bowls For Dinner a few nights a week. He raved about them and had a near endless stream of suggestions for what combination could be next. Dinner took on a whole new level of excitement. Who knew eating from a bowl could mean we were having ‘Bowls’ instead of just dinner?

But what he meant was, dinner would seem ‘cool’ if we ate it out of bowls. I wasn’t even really aware of the growing trend, but a quick search revealed hundreds of ways to eat dinner from a bowl.

Here are some of my favorites!

Enter winter and Minnesota snowfall

So, summer turns to fall, and fall turns to winter. But winter in Minnesota isn’t really like winter other places. It’s longer, much longer.

We could sense our son was tiring of the set-up. He didn’t want the job market suggestions, the ‘could you do the dishes?’ suggestions, or ‘was it you who put the dent in the car’ comments.

The holidays came and we all had fun in Mom and Dad’s new place, small though it had come to feel. By January, our son’s “placeholder job’s” days seemed numbered as he had a hot opportunity, with something much more up his alley. In Boston.

The joys of winter were beginning to wane

It was tail-end Covid times, so there were no on-site interviews, just Zoom. But his excitement was growing and our Bowl dinner discussions turned to of how he’d navigate the move, where he’d live, how he’d find a place, etc. I could tell his world was opening up to him and we were incredibly grateful to be around to witness it.

Then it started to snow, really snow. A real Minnesota snow. Long and hard and deep. When I got home from work the next night, our son seemed to be waiting for me and said, “We should walk out to the middle of the lake.” I was like, ‘huh?’ I’d fought traffic and icy roads to get home. It was dark, the day felt over. I had maybe just enough in me to make us Bowls for dinner. Even the short walk across the street to get to the lake seemed like a crazy idea to me.

He knew I was flagging, so he said, “Mom, how cool would it be to walk to the middle of the lake in all this snow and look around?” What’s a mom to say when asked a question like that? He wore me down as he started to recount all the reasons it’d be good for us. Just in case you’re unaware, here are some of them:

Benefits of being outside

A sense this could really be a ‘joy of winter’

But like all moments in time when you get a sense it’s going to be something more than it seems, I knew we had to do it. This is when it hit me. Exactly this is what we needed to do more of. Just stopping, breaking routine, doing something novel to break up the winter slog.

It didn’t need to involve travel, huge earth-shattering change, or even moving. Our son’s wonder over something that had long since lost much of its wonder to us, made it seem like we were right in the middle of a winter wonderland.

Something as small as heading out onto a frozen lake in the middle of a blizzard could be what started you in a new direction. Somehow, seeing your life and how you spent your time in a whole new way was how you turned the page.

When my husband got home, we three headed out in the snowy darkness and walked to the middle of the lake, which we became very intentional about. It took a number of repositionings before we three agreed we were exactly in the center of the lake. And we just stopped.

We stood still for a second, then spun around, like figure skaters. The twinkling of the lights of downtown in the distance, car headlights closer to us, but circling us as they drove around the lake. Even the lights in the windows of buildings around the lake seemed to flicker in the snowfall. We didn’t speak. We just stood there. For what was probably seconds but what felt like minutes. Somehow, we had suspended time.

Soon after that beautiful night in the center of the lake, our son headed off to Boston. Some moments really can’t be recreated, and we haven’t walked to the center of the lake since then. You can’t top perfection.

And now, when the lake is frozen and it starts to snow, the two of us will make Bowls for dinner and recount the wonder and beauty of that night. It took our middle child to remind us of the windows beyond our windows. And the simple joys of winter, even on a cold, snowy night.

Last update on 2025-05-18 / Affiliate links / Images from Amazon Product Advertising API