No love lost with winter weather
I am a weak Canadian.
I am less like a polar bear and more like an orchid when it comes to winter. I feel like I was born into the wrong climate. One positive thing 2020 brought was an exceptionally warm December. Global warming — my selfish, sunloving self loves it.
We recently had our first blast of winter. To my eyes, it looked picturesque, but my mind was having an Oscar the Grouch reaction to it. If I still went to confession, I would have to confess all the derogatory words that went through my mind.
First things first: I hate wearing layers of clothing. I feel like a blimp and I get overheated easily.
Secondly, I love shoes. Fashionable shoes — not clunky, waterproof, practical numbers. As I looked down at my shoes after going to town yesterday, I felt a surge of inner rage — salt stains and dirt all over them.
I also like being efficient. Winter adds four layers to everything — not just your body. Shovelling, putting salt out, cleaning the car off. Everything takes longer. And there are so many expenses associated with winter.
Being a dog owner is particularly obnoxious in the winter. Fear of someone falling and suing has caused insane amounts of salt to be put down on the sidewalks. It doesn't take long for poor Millie to start lifting her paws and crying. In an effort to stay mobile, I have to put ridiculous booties on her. Putting them on her is like putting a diaper on a twisty 10-monthold baby. She doesn't want me to do it. Millie gets snow cellulite — she brings in big lumps and balls of snow on her legs and belly. They create lovely wet patches throughout the house.
As an intrinsically positive person, I am always in a battle with my winter-hating self. It makes no sense to be negative about something you can't change. I have dramatic thoughts all the time in the winter — "I am moving. Why do I live here? OMG, I am so cold! This isn't humane! I am leaving!"
Then spring arrives, and it is as if I have a bad case of amnesia. Nova Scotia (outside of winter) is one of the most fabulous places in the world to live.
To be clear, 99 per cent of the time I keep this inner dialogue to myself. I do project my inner hatefulness for winter out into the world.
FRIGHTFUL WEATHER
I think my disdain originates from the fact that my family home is quite literally located at hell's gate of winter. Anyone reading this who has travelled Route 245 in winter knows where my parents' house is located. It is where the wind tears through my granduncle's field across the road and causes massive drifts and frightening whiteouts.
It was a normal occurrence growing up to see someone crawling (literally) up our driveway, as they had ended up in the ditch.
One night when I was a kid, I was anxiously waiting for my dad to get home in a blizzard. I heard the porch door open, and without turning on the light, I ran to greet him with open arms.
The darkness, the momentum I had, and the fact that you close your eyes when you go in for a hug of this magnitude left me hugging a man who wasn't my dad. It was a doctor from up the road who found himself in a winter predicament and needed to use our phone.
Winter controlled everything we did when we were growing up. The driveway needed to be plowed with a tractor so we could get out.
Once it was cleared and the car had warmed up, we would make our way to the end of the driveway. When the whiteouts broke and the coast was clear, mom would gun the car like she was a race car driver onto the road.
Waiting for the bus was like being in a torture chamber for me. As the wind blasted us, we stood like penguins in a group waiting for Eugene to pull up and rescue us in the big yellow bus.
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
As a young kid, I mostly enjoyed winter: sledding, fort and snowman building, skating on the pond across the road, and warming up with hot chocolate. Though I do not have tales to tell about the snow being as high as the telephone poles, I do have memories of drifts being high enough for us to jump off the house into them. Imagine parents letting their kids do that now?
Sure, go ahead and set a huge ladder up, climb up it, scale the side of the roof and run off the peak of the house and jump into a massive snowdrift.
I wasn't as much of a Braveheart as my brothers were. One time, I balked on the jump, so they took the ladder down and said, "If you want to get off the roof there is only way down … Jump!"
There is an urban legend that my brother David sunk so far into the snow when he jumped that his boots got stuck and weren't retrieved until the spring.
We would go sledding for hours with cousins from over the road. The fields were huge and had a decent incline. We would fly down the side of the hill — sometimes flipping over and getting awful snow burn on our faces and legs. My uncle would pull us back up with his snowmobile to do it all over again. We would stay outside so long that when I went in, my eyes were messed up from the brightness of the snow.
The thing is, when you're a kid, you have no responsibility other than to have fun. As long as your snowsuit, boots and mitts are dry by the time you want to go out again — all is good in your world.
Now that I am not living in the city and I have more space in my day to day to enjoy winter, I am going to try my hardest. I really am. I am going to buy a sled and rip down those hills with reckless abandon again.
With an insatiable love for human behaviour and circumstance, Emilie Chiasson absorbs the world around her, and turns her experiences into relatable stories. From her hometown of Antigonish to her travels around the world, she never fails to connect with the characters and perspectives that make life a bit more colourful. Read more at https:// emiliechiasson.wordpress.com/.