The Snowbird has landed

It was not supposed to snow last night. We watched Hamish Macbeth episodes until one am when Philip decided it was time to shuffle off to bed. I, on the other hand, was already so tired I couldn't move. Consequently, I fell asleep in my chair and didn't wake up until three thirty am. This is unfortunate on many levels. No sleep in a living room chair is good sleep. After the first five minutes all the cozy splendor fades into sleep peppered by the DVD theme song playing on an endless loop in your dreams because you forgot to turn it off as you drifted into that lazy chair sleep. Then there's the fact that it's incredibly bad for the neck and back. Considering my recent incapacitation due to my back going out, you would think I enjoyed being in a lot of pain to be so careless with it. Which would make you wonder how I could claim not to understand people enjoying recreational pain.

I stumbled around turning lights off and chanced to look out a window or two which revealed a light slow snow floating in the air. Not a lot of promise for snow on the ground in the morning. Still, it made me smile. Then I had to pick the dog up because she wouldn't budge off of the bed and I had to put her on her own bed. This also isn't good for backs. Lifting 49 pound dogs off of beds and carrying them across the room is awkward. Finally I got to sleep.

This morning I woke to an excited Max. Needless to say I was sour mouthed and groggy. He commanded me to look outside at the snow coming down. He announced that he was sure there would be no school because the ground was covered. I told him I didn't think it could have snowed enough to be covered. Like all good dictators do, he forcibly showed me how wrong I was. He told me to go look out the window. I mumbled about how that would require me to get out of the warm bed and move my limbs which I wasn't willing to do. "No no mamma, all you have to do is sit up and look. See, you can see the bushes out there are covered! You can see from right here. C'mon mom, just sit up and look." Then he told his dad to get up right now to go play in the snow. It wasn't even fully light outside.

Naturally Philip resisted. He has never been a morning person. He will never volunteer to get up before me. We don't exactly fight about it but there are little quiet morning skirmishes almost every day. If I let him get away with it he would stay in bed come hell or high water until ten am every single day. Hell and high water have an uncanny resemblance to me and Max.

For this reason I keep the breastfeeding card right there on the nightstand, ready to use in an emergency. Philip didn't get up early for a single morning for a year after Max was born. I got up because I had to breastfeed the baby. I also fed the cat and made coffee. I got really tired of it. I got mad. There was a sizable battle over that one. But he saw that he couldn't win. Life changes when you have a baby and there's a lot a man can do to share the burden. It's easy for women to feel they don't have a right to ask their men to help out more, but so much of the burden of bringing that baby to life rests on women's shoulders already, it's fair to ask that he make coffee and feed the cat. (For the record, Philip has been more helpful than many dads I've known with all the nitty gritty baby care with less complaining. So I'm not bashing him here.)

I didn't have to resort to the "I went through nine months, forty hours, and lots of blood to give you this son who right now is merely asking that you get up and play in the damn snow." He went. Grumbling, but he went.

This is so not what I was going to write about.

I was going to talk about how funny it is that a girl born and (mostly) raised in California can love the rain and snow and cold so much. I have always loved the winter. Before we moved to Ashland I practically had a heart attack I was so flooded with joy when it snowed in Richmond California. I was probably about six or seven at the time. I remember feeling like suddenly the world was perfect and happy and in spite of the very dark and bad things that happened at that time in my life, my little dark heart was completely flushed of all that was evil, for the seven minutes the snow fell. I ran in it, played in it, laughed and shrieked and completely forgot what nasty hell life can be for little kids.

I also remember we visited friends in Mount Shasta. I think it may have been my dad's cousin Mark and his wife April who lived there. We went when there was snow and I remember feeling like a creature born to taste the ice and walk through the powder sky. Like a doe born in the stark naked landscape, I had eyes and skin equipped to live where so many other animals will die if they don't hide and burrow. My senses are incredibly sharpened by the cold. I never feel as sharp, awake, and electrified with life as when it's so cold outside it strips your eyeballs.

What makes a person love something they have had such limited experience with? I am a person who believes in a combination of nature and nurture. You can learn to love almost anything. But some of us are born knowing things we have no reason to know; the way I knew that if I ever stepped foot in Scotland I would never get it out of my blood, I would never want to come home. I'm not Scottish, I didn't grow up with Scottish lore, nor did I know much at all about Scotland. I just knew; the same way I knew what sex would feel like long before I lost my virginity. I can't tell you how I knew, all I can tell you is that I wasn't in a hurry to get down and dirty and when I did, the only thing that surprised me about it was how much more it hurt the first time than I expected. It did not shatter my world with crazy newness. Because I already knew.

That's how I felt about snow too. About really cold weather. The Bay Area is not a place where you can experience extremes in weather. I was born in the heart of winter. Which doesn't mean much there. I remember seeing snow and cold in movies and knowing that's where I belonged.

I think you need to know all of that to understand why I am full to capacity this morning with a deep sense of belonging. If you want to know the truth, the truth I hardly ever say because it really annoys people who live in places like Michigan and Vermont, the truth is: I would thrive in a climate where I had to shovel snow and wear five insulated layers just to do my laundry in the garage. I love the cold that much. I tell people all the time that I'm not longing for six feet of snow, but I only say that because I get tired of people assuming that what they consider a great hardship could possibly make me really happy. These are usually the same people who don't understand how I could possibly find hundred degree weather an extreme hardship. They don't believe that the headaches, the heat rashes, the nausea, the sunstroke, the lobster red burn on my skin could possibly be so bad that I don't want to be broiled alive every single day of my life like they do.

Now I've told the truth. The next time you hear me politely explaining that although I love the snow I wouldn't want to live where people's houses get buried in it, you will know I'm telling a lie out of kindness (or irritation, depending on how you wish to look at it).

But I won't ever live in Vermont or Michigan. Both Philip and I are west coast people. The other fact is that Oregon is one of only two places I have ever been to where the first time I saw it I got the strong sensation that I had just come home to where I belong. I never belonged in California. I had to learn to love my home state. Which I did. But here, here in McMinnville, as in Ashland, I have landed where my spirit needs to be. Wants to be.

It won't snow here every winter. It may not snow again this year. While I have to admit I wish this area was much colder and got more snow, I love it here in this spot we've landed, so much so that I've decided to be happy with every snowfall, no matter how fleeting. But honestly? Oregon has been calling me home for twenty two years, and I think this snow is all for me. I've been missing the snow for every single one of those years, and I think the universe has been listening. The powers that be (which Max thinks is a really fat man in a brown suit) "Give her some snow. This is where she needs to be, give her the snow to make sure she doesn't convince Philip to move to Vermont. Do it now, she's a little crazy, snowbirds seek snow. It won't hurt us to give her a little more snow. But if she gets greedy we can bring in some unseasonably warm weather to teach her a lesson."

That's right folks, this snow is my homecoming party. And dammit, I'll smile like a loony idiot if I want to!

It's been melting the whole time I've been writing this little treatise. The walk to work was amazing. My boots crunching through powder; children everywhere building snowmen, throwing snowballs, and laughing. So much laughter! (Max was right, there's no school today). All the power lines dropping snow in sudden shivers. The sun started coming out. Is there anything more perfect in this world than snow dazzlingly new and white glinting like powdered diamonds on every roof, in every tree, and lighting every step you take? Children become little bundled imps with red cheeks and happy hands scooping up this amazing substance in a frenzy of excitement. Neighbors run out into the streets, all steps muffled. Dogs are extremely busy examining frozen scent and chasing the snowballs between the kids. It's amazing how snow can make everything quiet even when everyone is out in it bursting with excitement.

Max has told me he doesn't love winter. I don't think he likes the rain that much. But I'll tell you something, the kid loves snow. He loves it like I do. It lifts him up and inflates his lungs so that if he didn't have bones to ground him he'd fly. I made myself a little baby snowbird with white hair and skin so pale he could hide in this white landscape.