Not Ready for the Cold
After 27 years of living in Oklahoma, coming back to the Northeast is a welcome, refreshing change. There were too many things I missed, away from New England, with the ocean near the very top of the list, second only to family.
The first fall I was south of the Mason-Dixon line, my mother mailed a box of autumn leaves to me. I used push-pins to stick them to the cork board on my office door and cried every time I saw them. Leaves change in Oklahoma, but mostly to yellow and brown and then just fall off. I missed the brilliance of a full panorama of foliage viewed from the top of a mountain or even just the top of a building. Most panoramas where I was was only flat with more flat, maybe a hill here and there. I missed the crisp falls with apple picking and bonfires. And the leaves.
The first winter, I remember being at one of my cohort's homes to watch some football in January, so it must have been a playoff game. I sat in the full of cheering, drinking people, and watched outside, in the field beyond the apartment complex, a group of college students playing frisbee golf. In shorts. Most had taken off their shirts. In January. I noticed it was 73 degrees out. "I could get used to this part of winter," I told myself.
Spring lasted for about seventeen hours. Hyperbole, yes, but it got hot and stuffy and muggy around mid-April. No cool mornings, waiting for the sweet warm up leading to the light cool-down that comes with dusk that I was used to. The storms that accompany the arrival of spring there come with thunderstorms, which I used to enjoy and watch roll up across my northern backyard, and with thunderstorms, tornadoes.
Twenty seven years and still the sound of the siren sent me looking for non-existent shelter in my house; no basement for me--most homes where I lived did not have basements, due to the water table, but some did have storm shelters, which were always cost prohibitive for me ($6,000 and up for the most basic cement hole in the ground with a lid).
I used to love spring, but for 27 years, I feared spring and wished for it to get to the hot weather--equally oppressive, but at least mostly tornado-free--and that was just too sad. My two favorite seasons--fall and spring--reduced to very short weeks filled with fear and apprehension. I longed for a thunderstorm that didn't make me check every weather app I had on my phone and live-stream the two trusted meteorologists in my viewing area. I wanted to lie in bed and just listen to the rain, hear the thunder, and watch for the blinding flashes of white that lit up the room and woke up the cats.
Obviously, I survived.
But now back home I'm faced with the one thing I've never much liked out of all the seasons: snow. Maybe two things: cold and snow.
We had cold in Oklahoma. Ice storms, mostly; we'd lose power and email everyone we knew to find out if they had power of if it was just our section of town. Emergency response time was much better than it is in Texas, for which we were thankful. When it did snow, just about everything closed down; no plows, for the most part, so we waited for the sun to melt things to get back to school and work and groceries (except for the good old boys with trucks, who never had problems with snow, only with icy roads).
It got cold there, too, mostly because of the "wind come sweeping down the plains" you can (but shouldn't) sing about. Bitter. Biting. Making it a chore to walk across campus, something I never did from November till March.
Yet, there's something about the cold and snow in New England that makes it different. We're supposed to have cold and snow, and the good thing is that we're prepared for it. We have plows, we learn how to drive in it, we don't go crazy and run to the grocery store for bread and milk and toilet paper. New Englanders are used to it and know how to live with it, still getting out to Dunks for coffee.
That doesn't mean I am ready for it. I don't like cold, even though I do like being back in New England. I had a pair of boots I never even wore for six years, and I'm sure that's about to change this year. I bought a pair of heavy gloves. I have scarves. I bought a parka. I got through winters in New Balance sneakers and a navy peacoat. I don't like having to bundle up inside, even though it's the economical thing to do.
I know it's only February and we could, and probably will, certainly have more plentiful snow this winter, but I have the days counted down to spring and am looking forward to the first relaxing, tornado-free spring in twenty-seven years.