Still crying after the summer.
My passion for summer comes from my childhood spent in the country, in freedom! Now, when I'm on the opposite side of the time scale, the opposite side of youth, even though it seems cliché, I realize that I was happiest in this life when I didn't know I was happy.
In my childhood...
I was free and I didn't know it, I was happy and I didn't know it. Every summer I was with friends in the fields, by the river, and in the woods. Then summer entered me forever and made me forgive its too-hot excesses now!
Because I remembered my childhood and summer, I now remember the opposite of summer, "the snows of yesteryear".
When I was a kid, this was in the middle of the last century, the summer-winter "relationship" was different than it is now. Summer was less hot and scorching and winter, yes, winter, was real!
I have to put on the map where this was happening, of course, in different places on this earth of ours it must have been different, but I think people like me, with enough years behind us, have noticed a change.
My childhood was in north-eastern Europe, in northern Romania. There I lived the first ten years of my life, in my grandparents' small house and the big "backyard" that was formed by hills, woods, fields, and waters.
Like in a dream!
If summer now still resembles the summer of childhood, winter has changed radically. When I was a kid I knew that winter starts in December and doesn't leave until the end of March. During that time it was the absolute mistress. The snow was the size of the house and it was hard to live in such conditions but I didn't see that. All I could see was the children playing, and the sleigh!
Then, as I grew older, the winter got smaller.
Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?
Where are the snows of yesteryear?
"I can still remember the feeling of my first love, as fresh in my mind as if I were still a young man of 19. Ah, but where are the snows of yesteryear?"
Used to express nostalgia, sadness, or regret for the time in one's past that one cannot revisit or reclaim. A translation of the French phrase Mais où sont les neiges d'antan?, quoted from the 1461 poem "Ballade des dames du temps jadis" ("Ballad of the Ladies of Long Ago") by François Villon.
At first, I didn't notice this change, but it has become obvious in the last few years. Winter now, here where I live, lasts two or three weeks. With little or no snow, with autumn-spring temperatures. Somehow a favorable new situation. Less heating costs, less spending on thick clothes... But the nostalgia remains for the great winters of the past, the winters of childhood!
In this context, I had a big surprise one winter morning in 2017. My town, now further south, was buried in snow. An overnight snowfall turned everything white.
It was a momentary "rage".
The snow didn't last more than a week, but it was beautiful! It was like old times. We had, for a little while, the "snows of yesteryear" back!
The fairytale-like beauty we had in the park next to the house. One of the great blessings of my life is the park next door! Now my house is bigger than my grandparent's house but the yard is very small. I can't fit in it anymore. "the hills, woods, fields, and waters".
We haven't had this much snow since. Last winter it only snowed at the beginning of spring and the snow only lived for a week. I believe in global warming and climate change.
I believe it because I see and feel it!
I have a friend, I guess I can call him a friend even though we disagree on many things. A fellow Hive member and colleague, who writes exceptionally well but believes in conspiracy theories. Who believes that this whole world, as it has evolved for thousands of years, the ugly side of the world, will be changed by crypto, of course, much faster? That makes him against many things that seem to be induced into our lives by the world oligarchy. He doesn't believe in global warming, which he says is a manipulation...
In one of his last posts, if I remember correctly, he says he observes climate change but doesn't believe in global warming! A point of view, of course. Interesting, if he were to be right!
The winter of 2017 still haunts my memories, aided of course by photos found in a corner of my archive. I searched for winter photos in a desire to write to a theme offered by 
