Seasons

I've been thinking about this for quite awhile, over a year now.  Seasons are important to me.  I've always known they were, but never realized HOW important they were until I moved to a place that didn't have them.  Granted, if you go to different websites about Ecuador, they'll all tell you that Macas is in the Oriente, in the jungle and here there are 2 seasons, the wet season and the dry season.  My friends and family were asking me what the seasons were like down here, which is why I was looking at that portions of the websites, and I wanted to know how to answer them.  When was Macas' dry season and when was the wet?  The problem I ran into was that some sites said the wet season was from June-December, while others said October-July and still others said other durations.  I quickly realized, that if I averaged the information out, Macas was in a perpetual wet season, from January-January!  I remembered the administrator's wife telling me, the first summer I was down here, that they were ending their wet season then, in July, but after reading those websites, I was curious as to how I would perceive it, as well as how others would describe it.  So I got here in August of 2009 and it didn't rain much until about November or so, the entire time everyone told me that we were in a drought and it wasn't normal to be that dry and hot at that time of the year.  As I started to hear more and more about the weather, and talk to different people about it, I realized something.  People here don't consider their seasons wet and dry, but winter and summer.  However, they think nothing of having winter Sunday-Wednesday and summer coming in on Thursday and having Saturday be winter again!  Summer and winter here don't actually correspond to seasons, but to weather.  Whenever it's rainy and cold (and yes, my body thermometer has gotten completely messed up down here, next year should be entertaining!) it's winter and when it's sunny and hot, it's summer.  Theoretically, you could have 2 seasons in 1 day, and I think I've actually had days where different people have told me the season, but 1 said summer and the other winter!

The seasons here don't bring a sense of rhythm to people's lives.  Maybe I'm too much of a country girl, although, I really only ever technically lived in the country 1 year, my senior year of high school, it seems to define me better than city girl!  I've always looked to the seasons to help me relate to things and get ready for events and things that happen year after year.  For example, as the weather gets colder, the leaves start to fall, it rains a lot more and I know that Thanksgiving is around the corner.  Once we celebrate Thanksgiving, it's time to prepare for Christmas.  After Christmas comes my birthday (and now both my nephew and niece also have birthdays then!!!!) and then spring.  With spring comes Easter and my sister's and brother-in-law's birthdays and my mom's, too.  Then it starts getting a lot warmer, school gets out and we have summer, with my other sister's birthday and then school starts.  Then my dad's birthday and it starts getting colder, which means that it's time for Thanksgiving.  I realized, last year and this year, that without seasons, it's as if my body's in limbo, there's no passage of time and the calendar has no meaning, so Christmas really snuck up on me both years.  I have no frame of reference, aside from the seasons, that's enough to get it sunk into my head that it's time to prepare for Christ's birth!  Oh, people here decorate for Christmas and give presents, albeit, not as many presents as is typical in the States, but the tradition is still here, but even with seeing all of the decorations up and getting ready for the big Christmas program, it still surprised me when it happened and I, to this day, have a hard time convincing myself that it's actually passed.

I was trying to figure out why this was and the only thing I could come up with is that my mental annual rhythm is set to the seasons and I need them to help me mentally prepare.  It reminds me of the difference in how I celebrated Easter the few years that I didn't go to my church's Good Friday service.  A friend of mine's dad is a pastor and she asked me if I wanted to help them out on Good Friday, when they had their Easter service, since the building they met in they rented and was occupied Sunday mornings, so they couldn't meet then.  I said sure and had a lot of fun playing with the kids and celebrating Easter with them.  But, come Easter morning, the service didn't hold nearly as much meaning for me.  The first year I couldn't figure it out, just figured it was my mood or something, but after the 2nd year, I realized what was happening.  One year, the pastor was talking about why we celebrate Good Friday and said that without mourning, the celebration doesn't have as much meaning.  If we don't remember what was so horrible about Good Friday, how can we celebrate how good Easter is?  I realized that, for me, I needed that reminder on Good Friday, of why Easter was so special.  So the next year I went to the Good Friday service and really enjoyed Easter that year.  I'm beginning to think that I need seasons, in the same sort of way.  The change in seasons helps me anticipate what's coming next, so that I can mentally prepare for it and have Christmas (I noticed it most with Christmas and Easter) in my thoughts, so that when it comes, I've thought about it and remembered what it is that we celebrate then.

Plus, I like the cold, so it'll be nice to experience that again, even if I'll need a few more layers than I did 2 years ago!