Ho Hum
I always envied people who grew up in wintery climes. It seemed to me that I was missing out on some fundamental life experiences: sledding, daring someone to lick a metal pole, snow men. My deprivation came to me every single time I heard Bing Crosby sing "White Christmas". I mean, who gets to count on a white Christmas? The only white Christmas I ever had was when I was 6 and we had to drive all the way to Flagstaff, Arizona to get it.
Snow always has been an event in the northwest. I do remember one year, somewhere around when I was 10 or so, that we got a lot of snow; enough that school was cancelled for several days and we built things in the snow and ate snow ice cream and I'm pretty sure we even had a taffy pull. (Taffy is a huge project, which is why, I'm sure, Dame Judi declared it a special treat for those elusive "snow days"). I still remember those few days as a "long winter", it was such a departure from the norm. Good lord, it snowed so little during my childhood that we didn't even own things like snow boots or gloves.
And I've regalled you before with the few big snows we've had here, big being relative, of course, because I know that in snowy climes they do not shut down the city for 3 inches. I suppose the rarity of it makes its own sort of magic. Actually, I know it does. I think of the flurries we got the Christmas of 07 that led The Child to declare that "the best Christmas ever"; until '08, of course, when we had snow, real snow, for over a week at Christmas time.
Take that snow, plus the fact that we also got snow in January and February and one might begin to make the case that perhaps, just perhaps, all those CO2 emissions are rewriting the winter experience of this region. Maybe, just maybe, we are going to start being a place where a white Christmas is less rare; where parents will tell their children of walking through the snow to school (3 miles, uphill, both ways) and they won't be making it up. (At least, not the snow part).
Maybe winter=snow will be our new equation and with it will come a different attitude. Children will no longer stand with little noses smashed against windowpanes at the first sight of a flurry, praying that it sticks. Grownups will not longer freak out about how to get into work. We'll use language like "the first snowfall of the year", blithely assuming it won't be the last or only. People will own warm clothes and snow tires and snow shovels and will, when it snows, go about their business as usual.
I can tell you this, when it started snowing yesterday The Child was all, "Oh, man, I'm sick of this" and it never even occurred to me to call my collegue with all-wheel drive. "So it's snowing again", I thought, "It does that in the winter".
Snow always has been an event in the northwest. I do remember one year, somewhere around when I was 10 or so, that we got a lot of snow; enough that school was cancelled for several days and we built things in the snow and ate snow ice cream and I'm pretty sure we even had a taffy pull. (Taffy is a huge project, which is why, I'm sure, Dame Judi declared it a special treat for those elusive "snow days"). I still remember those few days as a "long winter", it was such a departure from the norm. Good lord, it snowed so little during my childhood that we didn't even own things like snow boots or gloves.
And I've regalled you before with the few big snows we've had here, big being relative, of course, because I know that in snowy climes they do not shut down the city for 3 inches. I suppose the rarity of it makes its own sort of magic. Actually, I know it does. I think of the flurries we got the Christmas of 07 that led The Child to declare that "the best Christmas ever"; until '08, of course, when we had snow, real snow, for over a week at Christmas time.
Take that snow, plus the fact that we also got snow in January and February and one might begin to make the case that perhaps, just perhaps, all those CO2 emissions are rewriting the winter experience of this region. Maybe, just maybe, we are going to start being a place where a white Christmas is less rare; where parents will tell their children of walking through the snow to school (3 miles, uphill, both ways) and they won't be making it up. (At least, not the snow part).
Maybe winter=snow will be our new equation and with it will come a different attitude. Children will no longer stand with little noses smashed against windowpanes at the first sight of a flurry, praying that it sticks. Grownups will not longer freak out about how to get into work. We'll use language like "the first snowfall of the year", blithely assuming it won't be the last or only. People will own warm clothes and snow tires and snow shovels and will, when it snows, go about their business as usual.
I can tell you this, when it started snowing yesterday The Child was all, "Oh, man, I'm sick of this" and it never even occurred to me to call my collegue with all-wheel drive. "So it's snowing again", I thought, "It does that in the winter".
Labels: Dame Judi, snow, The Child, things I remember
cobbled together by Moi at 6:19 AM
9 Comments:
Anti-greenhouse effect?
We were in the 70's over the weekend so all our snow is gone.
You don't want to know what kind of weather we have been having. But I did wear shorts and flip flops all weekend.
Last week we got yet another snowfall- now it's in the sixties...
Nah, nothing wrong here, no climate change or anything, don't be silly!
Yep..It's time for all of humanity to migrate to the equator,and build pyramids and stuff.
..It's what we do.
Of all the folks you know in bloggerland I probably whine about the snow the most (JP no longer counts because he no longer blogs). But....I will admit that the first few snowfalls are beautiful. We moved here full time in 1998 and the winters have gone from mild to sorta bad, to awful to ones we will talk about as the newest generation of "Old timers." It has been snowing for three days straight.
Climate change is real.
I can relate somewhat--even though we live in a typically snowy place, I am SO DONE with snow for this year. :)
Ba Ha Ha Ha
Yay!!! Thought the evil genius and minion had done ya in there for awhile. (McCain and Limbaugh? Limbaugh being the genius?)
Uuuuuhhhhhh. 'bout the weather. Read the book "The Day After Tommorrow". It talks about how winter can shift and while the last couple have been a bit colder this one being the worst of the two, over the last ten (as someone who's lived here for over 40 years) have generally been the warmest. So warm that trees had begun to leaf two to three weeks earlier.
But not this year.
Peace
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