It’s all relative

It’s all relative. All my relatives live in California, all my siblings anyway, and most of my cousins.

And it’s winter, and when it comes to winter, it’s all relative. A blustery forty degrees in fall feels like spring in February. It’s all relative.

Which is what I’m trying to tell my relative who’s moving out to the Midwest this spring. My older sister has been a lifelong resident of the Golden State. She likes heat and hates cold. So why, you may ask, would she deliberately choose winters in the Midwest? Crime? The high price of living? Gas at seven and eight bucks a gallon?

Nope. And it’s not even that her oldest son, his wife, and their seven kids live in Ohio. Not a bit of it.

She’s afraid of The Big One. You know, the Mega Earthquake where the earth splits open and California falls into the ocean. She’d rather endure our winters than risk ending up in a real-life a disaster movie.

She’s already bought her new home, signed the papers, sealed the deal. Sure, it’ll be nice to have a sibling who lives only four hours away instead of a four-day drive, so I’ve been telling her when it comes to cold, it’s all relative. Once she survives a winter out here she’ll get it.

In a recent letter I emphasized how nice it was before the holidays. Thursday before Christmas the high was on the forties, so sweatshirt weather.

Never mind that all us locals were going to the stores to get bread and milk before we got shoved in the icebox ourselves. I talked about how warm and cheery a fire can be.

Then I skipped over Friday through Sunday, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, when it was ten below with a wind chill twenty-five degrees colder than that. Instead I texted we were expecting a high in the fifties for New Year’s Day, and how we’d all be out in our swimsuits playing on the slip-nslide instead of sledding.

You remember we eventually topped out close to sixty. What snow we had melted and some people discovered their perennials were peeking out above the soil.

Winter sort of intruded again. Schools got cancelled because of the snow.

The other day I texted, “Hey, Mary Ann, 28 degrees and snow on the ground. One of the dogs didn’t feel like coming in, so I walked out on the deck wearing shorts and a t-shirt and didn’t feel the cold. I told you. You get acclimated.”

It’s all relative. She keeps writing back, insisting it’s because I’ve lived out here much of my life. And to be truthful, maybe she’s right. Way back in 1976 my wife Jennie and I moved to the Chicago area from California to attend seminary. We proceeded to have the three worst winters in Chicago’s history. There was one week where the high was below zero. And you remember the Blizzard of 1978. We had it in Chicago too. At one point no one left campus for a

week because the snow was piled so high no one could plow us out.

So, relatively speaking, I’m giving up. No use trying to convince her. Come April the moving van will start lurching across the country, and a week later she’ll be all moved in. Winter will come, like it or not, and whether she starts looking at winter in a relative fashion, you can’t wish it away.

Secretly, I’m looking forward to seeing how she reacts. Shh. Don’t tell her.

Frank Ramirez is the Senior Pastor of the Union Center Church of the Brethren.