Savour the season

Growing up in Portugal means you live for Summer. And when the days have grown too short and cold to think about Summer, you yearn for Christmas. And once New Year's gone you pine for Summer once again.

Living in the UK for four years I have grown to love the seasons as they come and to not look too farther into the calendar. I have mastered the art of savouring the present season and I have learned to compartimentalise the year. In truth it's not really enlightment, it's self-preservation. It is a way of coping with the long periods away from my family by facing the year in smaller chunks of time.

Right now I long for Halloween. Once that's done with, I will count the days until Bonfire Night, and from then the sleeps until Christmas. Then comes January, with a new year full of promise and resolutions. As the month draws to a close I focus on Valentines, shortly followed by my birthday. Then comes a day I never celebrated before moving to the UK - Pancake Day! This heralds Lent and 40-odd days of giving up something I love (usually chocolate) and proving myself I can do without it. Easter is soon on the horizon, followed by the Spring bank holidays, which tentatively open barbecue season. By this point I can start packing to go back to my family and my country. The day after I come back from holidays I close the door of Summer and look forward to the crunch of freshly fallen leaves, jumper season and hot tea aplenty. Knitting projects, warm blankets and movie night ins. Rui's birthday and our anniversary and we're back where we are now. And this is my year.

Even though this is something I merely happened to stumble upon on my route to keep from going insane in a foreign land, there is happiness and bliss to be taken from this way of passing time and I am glad it is now engrained into how I look at life and time. Each season has something to be celebrated, be it a special day, the food that's in season, a show or expo (Comic Con!) that's in town or simply the much awaited presence of loved ones. So grab you calendars and pepper them with dates to look forward to, you'll see the year has never flown so fast.