As I Please VII: Snowbound Edition

OK, so I'm not really snowbound. We only got 5" last night, and it's the loose, powdery snow that's incredibly easy to sweep off one's stoop, sidewalk or vehicle. But my second winter since I moved back East still finds me with a certain level of child-like delight in watching the stuff come down through the glare of the streetlamps at night. I experience the same when I awaken and look out the window into the unnatural morning brightness -- sunlight on all that still-unbroken white powder. And this got me to thinking, as I sit here at 8:51 on Friday, January 7, 2022, that seasons are curious creatures.

In Southern California, there are no seasons as such. By that I mean there are only 1.5 seasons. One of them is called summer and one of them is called not-summer. Summer needs no explanation. Not-summer is essentially all the leftover weather summer didn't want, but it doesn't rise to the level of a full season of any type. It isn't cold enough to be called winter, it isn't pretty enough to be called spring, and it lacks nearly all the aesthetic charm of autumn. It's simply a cool, gray, occasionally rainy set of months between November and May. Then one day it ends and it's summer again.

In the other states I've lived as an adult, Maryland and Pennsylvania, seasons generally tend to have identities so strong one could call them personalities, even characters. I say this notwithstanding climate change, which has certainly screwed around with how those characters behave. Nevertheless, the Easterner understands that each newly-minted year comes with four distinct eras, each of which requires different clothing and behaviors, and inspires different attitudes. When I was a Californian, I missed this rhythm, and even after twelve years still felt its absence. Now that I'm a Pennsylvanian, I'm grateful to have it back. And this gets me thinking about a lot of weather-related topics:

* Seasonal depression is a real thing, but there is another type of seasonal depression nobody talks about: "la cafard." This is a French expression which translates roughly to "spirit sickness." In Vietnam, French troops began to experience depression due to the monotony of the (green) landscape and the (hot) weather, so different from mercurial France, where gray, drab, bitterly cold winters content with poetry-inducing springs and gently colorful summers. In California, when I was living in the Godawfully hot Valley, where sunshine is like a boiling liquid pouring over you for 16 hours a day, I often found myself almost clinically depressed. I longed for hard rain, chill temperatures, copper and gold leaves, and even snow. The things you grow up with are what you expect out of life, which explains why so much of middle age is spent in a state of dismay, wondering why you feel so out of step with the world, so "in" but not "of." Which is why having seasons again makes me unreasonably happy. Once again I feel as if the world makes sense.

* Now, I say, "unreasonably" because this morning I had to take 5" of snow off my hulking Volvo SUV, and do it with my hands. Thus I soon experienced that sensation unique to real winter, which is the stinging pain you get when fresh snow and ice work their way into the tiny gap between sleeve and glove and make sweet love to your wrists. I confess that when I was growing up I hated this feeling like poison. Now I find it charming in a maschostic type of way, sort of like when a woman slaps me on the ass in the hallway. Possibly this pleasure will fade with time -- I mean snow on the wrists, not getting smacked on the backside in an office setting.

* Another curious thing I'd forgotten about Pennsylvania, which differs it from Maryland, is the ferocious, even violent territoriality people of all ages and races feel toward "their" parking spaces. I mean the ones that they had to dig out after a really big snowstorm. In Maryland, at least the part where I grew up in, merely digging out a space, no matter how long it takes or how much sweat or cursing is involved, does not entitle you to its exclusive use thereafter. It may be bad manners to scoop up some just-vacated spot, knowing the poor slob who cleared it out just about had a heart attack doing so, but you aren't going to get any grief for it beyond -- perhaps -- a digusted glare. Not so in PA. In Pennsylvania, any spot on the curb you dig out is yours entirely, by right of conquest. You tackled that mound of snow, so you own the street beneath it until the snow melts. It's true you have to mark it when you leave -- the most common object used is a chair of some type, placed dead in the middle of the now scraped-clean space -- but it still belongs to you, and if anyone else parks there, well, in the immortal words of Robert Mori, "It's on." The least that will happen to a space-thief is an immediate cursing out. The most...well, a fancy-Dan lawyer I worked with once parked his Saab in someone else's space and came back the next morning to find all four tires slashed and his radio antenna hacked off. And what's more, no one sympathized with him. Some things just aren't done, and in Pennsylvania, that includes stealing someone's space.

* I am also reminded, as I sit here melting, that living in this climate requires an enormous wardrobe as well as specialized equipment. The stuff I need just for the period January - March, or at most April, includes all manner of heavy coats, boots, gloves, wool hats, wool socks, ice scrapers, etc. My closets bulge with stuff I don't need about 220 days a year. And inevitably, when nature finally requires me to wear it, I find moths have had a go at some of it during the dormant months. My only double breasted suit coat, and my cashmere topcoat, are now slightly moth-eaten. I suppose this is my fault, because on the rare occasions I have seen a moth in this apartment I can't bring myself to kill it.

* Since I work for the district attorney, I dress up five days a week, but it is damnably difficult to look dapper and be practical when it is 22 degrees and snowing -- or worse, 38 degrees and sleeting. Formal attire is absolutely useless in every possible respect when it comes to battling the elements. None of the fabric keeps out the cold or deflects the rain, and the footwear is worse than useless, it is actually hazardous, since it has basically no tread. The statistics on stupid winter-related injuries caused by falling must be very grim indeed.

* Speaking of winter-related injuries, it is known that heavy, wet snow is referred to by cardiologists as "heart attack snow" because of all the people who have heart attacks trying to get it out of the damned driveway. America is a country of fat and lazy people, and winter gives them an excuse to eat even more and be even lazier: so when called upon to finally do something vigorous, many folks just keel over. However, I shan't judge, because I'm not a homeowner, and my landlord is stuck with that task. And he uses a snowblower.

* A fascinating factor of snow-psychology is how it makes everyone, regardless of age, revert emotionally to their schoolboy/schoolgirl years. Nearly everyone I know resents having to work on snow days, and while scraping ice off windshields and the lovely sound of snow-shovels striking asphalt is part of this resentment, the real bitterness lies in the idea that snow means that one gets to stay home from school. It's really just that simple. When you're a kid, the white stuff means a day spent at home, sledding, drinking hot chocolate, getting into snowball fights and generally reveling in life and the fact you are not in school. I'm now a grown man, a public servant filling a vital communal task, responsible enough to carry a gun on my hip...yet if it snows 3"...well, by God, I have to choke down a gallon of bile if I'm expected to be in court.

* This thought brings me to sledding. Do kids go sledding anymore nowadays? If I had to guess I'd say it is a dying activity. When I was a youngling, we had both high and low dives at our pool; by the time I was in college the high dive had been dismantled "for liability purposes" and later the low diving board was removed as well. In the late 70s and early 80s the hill upon which I lived was a mob scene of kids sledding and parents standing by, drinking what I believed at the time was coffee, but now suspect was mostly coffe-flavored Scotch, as they prevented traffic from coming through. These sledding expeditions were savage, right out of the chariot sequence in BEN-HUR or the grisly climax of ROLLERBALL: I vividly remember riding on my brother's back downhill, jumping from our sled to another boy's, grabbing his steering aparatus, and forcing him head-first into a pack of garbage cans at about 20 mph as I rolled clear at the last moment. And somehow I was never called out for this behavior, much less punished. Our parents watched, yet looked the other way. The entire exercise seemed to be regarded as a rite of passage in which some head trauma and extremity-damage was inevitable. Yet when I think about it, I can't remember seeing or hearing about anyone sledding down that hill since the late 1980s or so. It simply isn't done nowadays. Too much risk, too little community. I never wanted to be one of those middle-aged bastards that croaked, "In MY day...." but I suppose that's just what I am. Still, I don't feel superior for having this experience: I feel sad that so many others lack it. When did we, as a people, stop letting children be children?

On that down-note I bring this latest installment of As I Please to its conclusion. I hope it finds you at home, a good fire going on the grate, and your beverage of choice close to hand. But as you sip it, just remember: snow may come but one season a year, but it's never too late to go sledding.