Thought of the Day: December’s wintery breath is already clouding the pond…

December 1, 2025

Thought of the Day: December’s wintery breath is already clouding the pond, frosting the pane, obscuring summer’s memory… — John Geddes

There’s something about this quote that hits with a soft thud, the kind that doesn’t knock the wind out of you, but quietly reminds you that seasons are shifting whether you’re paying attention or not. One minute you’re sipping iced coffee on the porch, watching the kids run barefoot through the yard, and the next minute you’re scraping ice off your windshield with whatever object you find first, a gift card, a paint scraper, the back of a spoon, because you definitely misplaced the actual ice scraper fifteen warm weeks ago.

But Geddes isn’t just talking about the weather. He’s talking about how quickly life changes, how memory fades without asking permission, how even the things that felt so close a moment ago can suddenly seem fogged over.

Winter does that. It rolls in with this strange mix of silence and force. It doesn’t shout its arrival. It whispers. It spreads. It settles into the corners of your life, the windows, the mornings, the routines, and before long you’re wiping condensation off glass that used to be clear.

And here’s the part I always come back to: winter doesn’t erase summer. It just softens it. The memories are still there, but they become gentler, blurred by time the same way frost blurs the view outside the window. You can see the outline, but not the details. And maybe that’s okay.

Maybe the seasons are supposed to do that, not just the literal ones, but the emotional ones. Maybe they’re meant to teach us that life isn’t static. That warmth comes and goes. That clarity fades and returns. That we are shaped by cycles more than by moments.

I think about this a lot during transitions. How we’re always living in that subtle overlap between what was and what’s coming next. Between the memory of summer and the breath of winter. Between comfort and challenge. Between warmth and the quiet sharpening of the cold.

And if I’m honest, winter asks something of me that summer doesn’t. Summer gives freely. Winter requires presence. Awareness. Effort. You don’t just stroll into winter the way you stroll into July. You brace for it. You prepare. You adapt. In that way, winter makes you more honest, more awake, more intentional.

Maybe that’s why the quote lands with so much weight. It’s a reminder that life has seasons, and seasons within seasons. And that each one, even the cold ones, even the ones that obscure the easy memories, is shaping us into someone a little stronger, a little steadier, a little more aware of how temporary everything is.

But temporary doesn’t mean disposable. Temporary means meaningful.

So today, I’m sitting with this thought, letting the frost on the window be a gentle reminder: summer always returns. Warmth always finds its way back. And in the meantime, winter offers its own gifts, clarity, quiet, reflection, a slowing-down of the frantic pace we pretend we can maintain forever.

If the world is clouding the pond and frosting the pane, maybe it’s just making space for you to look inward instead of outward — even for a moment.

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