WINTER WARMTH

It must've been dang cold for a few days when a temperature in the high-thirties feels like a heat wave.  

Everybody was outside this past weekend.  People were sledding on hills that had lost all the snow from their mounts due to the recent high winds and frigidly dry conditions.  They didn't care; they simply started further down the slope.  People were out walking their dogs, and the pups were leisurely lolling along, obviously enjoying the fresh, warm air.  People were walking and jogging and running, wearing sweatshirts as their heaviest outer-clothing.  The shops were enjoying brisk business as people left the safety of their homes, their cars, and the local coffee shops to venture out into the January air that felt more like April.  

People smiled and waved and engaged in conversations that showed they were beyond tolerating one another and the elements.  Even though a passing flurry left Sunday morning freshly dusted, people here in the Northeast joked that it was picnic weather, beach weather, shorts weather.  I actually saw people wearing shorts, and I saw more gloveless hands out over the weekend than I saw people wearing coats.

I know it's going to get bad before it gets good again.  There are many reasons that I should hate the winter (biting winds, havoc with my skin, hair static, heavy clothes, scraping car windows, shoveling snow), but I don't.  Not yet, anyway.  Would I love to live on a warm beach?  Sure.  Would I miss the snow falling and the silence it brings?  You bet.  Would I miss the thrill of a nasty blizzard?  Most certainly.

Do I wish the sun didn't set before 4:30 every day?  Admittedly, winter would be infinitely more enjoyable if it stayed light outside until 8 o'clock like it does in the summer.  But there is something spectacular about the pink-violet skies of winter sunrises on my way to work and sunsets on my way home, and the visible dark gray wall of an impending storm front that cuts across the icy sky like a fortress wall.

When it snows, everything looks clean.  Until the plows and the sanders make dirty edges along the pristine snow banks, even the alleys of the city and crusted roofs of tenements look sparkly and fresh.  When the sun shines, the world is blindingly white, right up to the snow that adheres to the bare branches, dropping like errant puffed missiles as the slight winter warmth sets in.

We're lucky in New England.  Rarely do the cold snaps, the truly severe and brutally cold wind chills, last more than a few days.  And the treacherously cold days are always memorable.  I recall one day when I was young, maybe ten, that the temperature never reached higher than -5, and the wind chills and darkness of early evening drove the temperatures much lower still.  I remember looking out the window through the frost and seeing the most beautiful full moon; I remember it now as if it's happening all over again.

Winter is like that.  For all the times it is different, it is still so much the same; for all its fury, there is also its timidity.  I hear next weekend may be nearing the fifties.  Sounds like perfect weather for a long walk and drinks on the patio.  I'm quite certain my Southern friends think I'm insane (perhaps for more reasons than just this), but there's a part of me, as excited as I am for the winter respite, that wishes there were a huge, honking snowstorm headed our way because in addition to being exceptionally beautiful, there's nothing like a forced slow-down of activity, Mother Nature's version of "sending us to our rooms," to remind us just how fortunate we are not only to be living in New England but also just to be alive.

Okay, okay, so I'm sentimental.  But I'll also admit I'm a little chilly.  Bring on the heat wave, but don't bring spring on; not just yet, anyway.  We're still a few flakes short of a New England winter, and I'm not ready to give up or give in just yet.