Winter

Winter is not shown through a storm or a stretch of cold weather, but through the work of preparing the island house for the season. Grandmother’s preparations make winter a threshold: the household is made ready for its inhabitants to leave, and familiar rooms begin to feel different before they are empty.

Preparing for Winter

Grandmother starts early because, as she explains to Sophia, tasks are best done before they are forgotten. She takes down the curtains and covers the south and east windows with disposable paper bedsheets, leaving instructions about the autumn birds and asking the next occupants to bring in more wood. She also leaves practical supplies in readiness, including cigarettes and candles in case the lamp fails. These preparations turn the coming winter into a set of concrete duties, anticipated before the family has gone.

Her decisions about what to put away are selective rather than merely practical. She hides the barometer, sleeping bags, and seashell box under the bed, then later brings the barometer out again. She leaves the figurine in plain sight because she thinks a little exposure to sculpture will do no harm, and insists that Sophia’s father leave the rugs on the floor so the room will not seem unfriendly over winter. The house is therefore not simply shut down: Grandmother weighs what should be protected, what can be used, and what might preserve a sense of welcome.

A House Becoming Strange

The paper coverings alter the rooms before winter arrives. With two windows screened, the room becomes secretive and conspiratorial, yet also very lonely. The coverings perform a practical function, but their effect is emotional as well: they change how the familiar interior can be seen and inhabited. Winter’s approach is registered as a shift in atmosphere, not only as a change in temperature.

Grandmother continues to attend to the house’s small, material details. She polishes the door handle and scours the rubbish pail; after washing her clothes beside the woodyard, she is tired and goes to the guest room. That room grows crowded with things awaiting spring or no longer needed. Its nets, nail kegs, steel wire and rope, and peat sacks gather the practical leftovers of island life into a dense interior that contrasts with the rooms being made ready for departure.

Memory and Seasonal Change

Before sleeping, Grandmother studies the commonplace things around her. Her attention rests not only on useful equipment but on traces of past island life: nameplates from boats long since broken up, storm indications written on the wall, pencilled records of dead seals and a mink, and a picture of a hermit in an open tent against the sea. As the guest room fills with objects held over for another season, it also becomes a place where records and remnants remain present.

Winter’s significance lies in this double movement of preparation and recollection. The house is arranged for the coming season, but its objects keep earlier lives and work in view; meanwhile, the papered windows make the rooms feel both protected and solitary. Grandmother’s attention to these details gives the seasonal transition a human scale, shaped by practical care, the prospect of spring, and awareness that the island’s familiar life will change.