Thaw

Thaw

by Paula Gould

I stepped out through the sliding glass doors, which struggled to slide open against the force of the winds. It was a strikingly beautiful day on the harbor, despite the brisk gusts. As the doors parted, the wind swept my hair with a forced breath that took the air from my lungs.

It was freezing.

I had just rambled thoughts and ideas to a group of eager entrepreneurs who jotted notes and thanked me for my insight. I barely remember it. I felt unkempt and scattered.

As I scurried toward my car, looking forward to the silence and warmth it would offer between meetings, I clicked the fob but the door wouldn’t open. “Really? Today?” I was frozen.

Annoyed, I ordered a cab, called my husband to vent and then went on youtube to find “vw key not working how to open car.” Within seconds, I had the answer but couldn’t get the key to pop the door handle cover according to the instructions. It was now brutally cold outside, my hands barely functional and my cab was arriving. I abandoned my new project and went on with my day, disrupted and inconvenienced by this unexpected turn in my schedule but not deterred from my day’s mission.

In the cab, I detailed what had happened and we agreed the key battery was dead. At the red light, he took out his spare key and taught me how to jimmy it open to change the battery and avoid an ungodly service charge from the dealer. I was grateful.

As the car went silent again from a dearth of things to discuss and a lack of desire to fill the silence with chatter, I realized I was frozen inside. Not for this moment but as a state of being. Glacial, as despite feeling frozen I was still moving forward, still carving paths, albeit slowly. So slowly in fact, I reflected that I felt still, yet never settled. I found myself running through my activities and energy levels, how the impending winter would cause them to further decline and what i could do to combat it.

I’ve been glacial for months. The compounding of responsibilities, personal goals, family goals, protecting myself, not feeling protected. External expectations, which interestingly were higher than internal expectations for the first time I can ever recall. The toll of navigating corporate politics that I’ve always frustratingly seen as an unnecessary barrier to collective success. I felt beaten down by some and lifted by others, never in equal measure. All slowly halting my flow without fully stopping me in my tracks.

There’s warmth though. Maybe that’s what keeps the glacier moving. There’s friends who have been my campfire, my signal, even guiding lights. There’s warmth in my confidence in myself, in spite of efforts to crumble it. There’s wins that hydrate and reenergise. The kids, my deepest loves, deplete me with their bickering and sheer will for independence but flood me with wordless joy. The husband, my other deepest love who depletes me when we bicker and struggles sometimes with my contradictory strain for independence and oneness, but nourishes me with support and confidence.

I’ve come to refer to everything in this time of my life as metaphor. My Ice Age, the Ice ceiling, the cold shoulder (the state of being an immigrant) all reflecting the landscapes and seascapes beyond my living room window. I’ve resisted Iceland for the 8+ years I’ve been living here. But it’s in my veins now and it’s accelerating, if but at a glacial pace. It occurred to me what I really need is to thaw.