Winter, We Need To Talk

Dear Winter,

We should get this out in the open right upfront: There have been some hard feelings between us in the past. And I’ll admit it, I’ve contributed to the tension. I won’t deny that I said some pretty nasty things about you to Autumn back around October when I started to think about you coming back this year. It’s not what you want to hear, but there it is.

Oh, winter. Let's not pretend you're going to act this calm every day.

Right now, things are going well with us. Nobody could argue about that fresh snow you put down for Christmas. Gorgeous. And you’ve been getting temps into the mid-30s a lot these days. You even went nuts with a 61-degree day a week or so ago. That was unbelievable; seemed like something Spring would do. Oh…sorry. Anyway, I have to give you credit for me being outside without a hat quite a bit lately, and I’m sure I’ve heard more birds chattering in the trees. I even watched the Rose Bowl on New Year’s Day and didn’t get that gut-wrenching longing for sunshine and warm weather that usually makes me promise that next year, I’m dropping a couple of grand to go out to the game, no matter who’s playing in it, even if it’s Ohio State. You’ve been that easy on us so far.

But I’m not going to let you sucker me in like this again. Do you think I can just forget about how things have been between us? I mean, it was just last year that you tried to kill me. Don’t act like I’m overblowing that whole thing. Icy road? Rolled over vehicle? Yes, I’m bringing that up again. And I won’t even go into the blizzards that knocked out everybody’s power or all the shoveling I had to do last year. Yes, I know I could go buy a snowblower. But I shouldn’t have to. That’s the whole point. You never get that.

Look, there are still some great times. I can see that. There’s a reason everybody feels the need to go snap a picture and put it on Facebook every time you frost the trees in the morning. And when I take the kids out tramping in the woods with 8 inches of powder underfoot, it’s enough to make me feel sorry for all the Phoenix people who don’t see this.

Except Phoenix people don’t need 25 minutes to get the kids into the car after they wrap the little squirts up in six layers of clothes and jam them into a car seat like bags in an overhead airplane bin. And people in say, San Diego, don’t have to put off getting their groceries for days just because they can’t bear the thought of unbuckling Little Jimmy and packing him 300 yards across the windswept tundra of a Target parking lot.

Sorry, I’m ranting now. I promised I wouldn’t do that. It’s just that it’s hard for me to ignore that you treat a lot of places better than you treat us here in Iowa. We don’t have ski hills here. We don’t even have real snowmobile trails. Every time you drop a few inches of snow, people pull on their helmets and start racing around cornfields, which is strangely depressing to see, like kids playing soccer with a ball made of rolled-up socks. And what about the ice? In states that have vertical surfaces, people actually climb it for fun. We just fall on it and break our wrists. Do you think I don’t notice that double standard?

Anyway, here’s what I think we should do: Let’s give this another couple of months. If things haven’t improved between us by about April 1, maybe we just need to spend some time apart.