Everyone experiences those days when life just seems too much to handle. When no matter what we do, everything just seems so difficult to think about or deal with. If the feeling hangs on for a while it is called the blues.
The blues are very debilitating. We can see it in the eyes and body language—or hear it in the voice—of those who suffer from it.
When I was young, my grandmother and our beloved first family dog passed away around the same time. It was all such a huge mystery to me.
It was this culmination of pain that caused me to experience my first bout of the blues.
It seems winter here in our Adirondacks can bring on the blues pretty quickly. Pipes freeze, snow piles up faster than we can shovel it, and conversation at the post office revolves around who had the lowest temperature reading on their thermometer that day.
It doesn’t take very long for the blues to creep in when you hear about the passing of a dear friend, don’t see the sunshine for days, or think about growing heating bills on a below zero January afternoon.
At seven or eight years old it’s okay to cry over spilled milk or for no apparent reason at all.
But as we grow older we become more stoic and have a tendency to shelter others from our sadness by keeping it to ourselves.
I don’t believe I have ever felt the blues in the summertime when the days are warm and long and free of winter chores.
But I do remember those bluesy moments of 1975 when despite the mounting snow, the bus still came by to take me to school.
And the days when I was just plain bored with my backlog of inside projects, models, books, and toys and could not stand to be cooped up in the house any longer.
Those were the days my brother and I invented puppet shows with several acts set to music.
We would spend a whole day on set design and learning our lines and the following day would entertain the family with our performance.
We never made it through a single act without falling into uncontrollable giggles.
And from the time I was growing up Adirondack to this very day, I have found that laughter is the key to chasing away the winter blues.
Mitch Lee, Adirondack native & storyteller,
lives at Inlet. ltmitch3rdny@aol.com