A Mind of Winter

“One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow”

Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man

It’s January. The snow has finally come to Ottawa. What does it mean to have a “mind of winter?” I encourage you to read the entire poem quoted above.   

I tested my blood sugar levels after my usual lunch of a whole wheat tortilla full of veggies and a few slices of meat. I don’t test daily for each meal, just spot checking when I try different things or on occasion. My blood sugar level was higher than I was expecting but still within range. Still, I was upset by this result.

It feels like so much is riding on getting everything absolutely right every single time. If I can’t manage my blood sugar levels, I will need medication to control my diabetes. If I need meds, will it be expensive? I started to spin. I felt like a failure.

Charles suggested we go out to our favourite store, Kowloon to pick up mushrooms, which we needed. Kowloon is a short walk from our apartment. It wasn’t too cold on the way there, but the snow was thick and heavy, then the wind picked up. I loved it. It was great to be out walking with Charles, just to get out was lovely. The cold was something to focus on rather than poor, poor, pitiful me, to quote a Warren Zevon song.

I had spent the morning jumping through the hoops of submitting a novel manuscript for publication. Fiction seems to require more hoops than poetry. Why is that? One publisher asked for a synopsis and two or three chapters, along with a short bio. I worked on that, submitted the material, only to have the e-mail, which came directly from the publisher’s site, bounce. Argh. I tried again with a different publisher. This one required a cover letter with a synopsis, a short biography and a brief explanation of how the work would fit within their catalogue, so I checked out some of their books and came up with a few sentences. This took eons. Then I had to create an account on yet another submission manager. Then I had to make sure that these various documents were either in a file or ready to be pasted in the body of a form. It was a ridiculously labour-intensive process and not at all straight-forward or intuitive. It seemed foolish because I know there’s no way this novel, written as part of the Anvil Press 3-Day Novel Contest in 2022, has a hope in hell of being published, but I wanted to try to do something constructive today, as I try to do every day. This felt fruitless.

Then the blood sugar level disappointment happened. And I felt like an idiot. I can’t even control my own body. Ever feel this way? So powerless. We are watching New Amsterdam, an American TV drama about a hospital in New York City. A regular character, a psychiatrist asks a patient, “when was the last time you felt in control?”

The thing is, does anyone ever feel in control? Do you? I seldom do. I am starting to learn how useless it is to actually believe that I am in control. I can only do my best.

So we went for a walk. At Kowloon, which is becoming our happy place, we browsed the aisles and marvelled at the excellent prices. Do you need limes? They’re 6 for $1.50 or close to that. Amazing! They had giant honey crisp apples, shrimp and all kinds of great deals. How fortunate we are to live a snowball throw away from this store.

Charles suggested we go to a café on Somerset that he had never been to before. We went to a little café and spoke with the manager, who was friendly. We talked about writing. He mentioned how a need for perfection stopped him from writing. This rang a bell for me. I’ve been like that about my diabetes. The advice I gave him about writing is also applicable to me about my diabetes. Just try. Don’t listen to the voice that tells you you’re a failure, you’re an imposter. Just keep going. The first draft will probably be awful, but that’s ok. Just keep going.

Sometimes my blood sugar level is higher than I want it to be, but for the most part, it’s well within range. I need to think of the overall picture rather than the moment where it was a little high. Every three months I get my A1C level tested and it’s been below pre-diabetic level for more than a year now. I do a lot of physical activity and I avoid high carb meals, but blood sugar levels go up for all kinds of reasons, including due to stress. I called it a snakey disease, and that’s what it is.

I told Charles I feel that it is my responsibility to control my blood sugar levels and he told me that I am doing my best, and that’s all I can do. To have a mind of winter is to not be dismayed or discouraged by the cold and the snow, but to find peace with it, to enjoy it even. Finding joy in difficult times isn’t easy, but it’s necessary.