Winter will be here before you know it.  Or at least that’s what it is called in California, out of deference to the calendar I guess and because Christmas is coming.  It’s not really winter, you understand.  Winter to me is not cold soaking rain, dreary skies, tule fog that cuts to the bone all right, but isn’t bone chilling enough to build any real character; maybe you’ll endure an occasional night of frost or two that is just enough to kill the plants but is gone by coffee break at 10 a.m.   That is what I call “fall” or a “dreadful spring” but certainly not winter.   It may drop to 32 degrees Fahrenheit here sometimes.  Oooooh,  terrible.  However will we survive?

When I say I miss Illinois, people invariably say “Yeah, but I bet you don’t miss the winter.”  Oh yes I do.  Big time.  Even people back in Illinois make patronizing remarks about how I’ve just forgotten, how much you get tired of it by March.  Yes, I know.  I remember.  I miss it.

Let’s start with fall.  We get fall colors here in Lafayette, but it’s never crisp.  It’s fall colors and warm air, maybe dipping into cool air.  Sure, there might be a nip in the air at night, a cold ocean breeze, but nothing serious, nothing in the air that you can actually smell that says “enjoy walking outside with just a sweater, stop and feel the warm midday fall sun – winter is on the way, and it will be a long time before you feel anything close to that again.”  When it gets cold enough, you stop being able to smell anything at all.  That doesn’t happen here.  By November the winter flowers are starting to blossom here, for heaven’s sake!

Halloween in Illinois was always a crap shoot.  You might have been able to wear just a long shirt underneath your costume, but there was very little worry that you would stay out after the sun went down, even when the afternoon started out warm.  When the sun went down and the sky turned orangish purple and the bare trees turned into coal black skeletons – it also got cold, just like that.  Time to go in, get warm and dive into the candy, there was no desire to hit one more house when your nose was cold and runny.  Some years you would have the disappointment of having to actually wear a winter jacket over your costume, some years it would already have snowed…

I’m an adult.  I understand that it wouldn’t be as much fun to go out and shovel snow now, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still love the sound of a snow shovel across a driveway, the only sound you hear in the silence of a new snowfall.  Echoing throughout the neighborhood in the dark you’d hear other brave souls out there doing the same.  It was dark and quiet, but you weren’t alone, you had company, the rhythmic scrape of the shovels.   Maybe I’d have to hire a kid to do it now – that’s ok.  I’m not even sure I would unless it was a heavy, wet snow.  The powdered sugar snowfall made all my snow princess fairy tale dreams come true.  Powdery snow in the air, powdery snow on the ground, perfect kindergarten art project snowflakes falling on my jacket, impossibly perfect and intricate proof of God’s love of beauty that I could see with the naked eye.

One day, when I already knew we would be moving to California, in January of 1982, I was on my way to school.  It had snowed lightly the night before. The frigid air was still, the sky was ice blue, the sun was shining but appeared small and cold in the sky.  When it’s that cold, the snow is crystalline – it had not yet blown off the tree branches, and had settled on top of the old snow in the fields along the highway, a light glistening frosting as far as I could see, the trees spindly sparkling white ornaments.    I felt as if I was in a beautiful ice castle.  As I often do at times like that, I stopped whatever I was thinking about and said to myself “remember this.”  I did and I do, and when I do my heart aches just a bit to see it again that way.

Forget? How could I possibly forget a lifetime of winter in Illinois?  How could I forget how wonderful hot kisses feel when you are outside and it’s 5 degrees?  How could I forget walking across a parking lot with the wind stinging my face, my imagination leading me to pretend I am an arctic explorer?   How could I forget how great everyone looks when they arrive inside and their cheeks are rosy and eyes are shining because they survived that walk.

I understand that when you walk off a curb in the city and think you are stepping cautiously onto icy pavement,  and only because your boot immediately fills with freezing water do you discover that you have actually stepped into a slushy mid-March-thaw puddle that only looked solid,  it is easy to dream of California.  I understand that the first time you can strip off your coat is followed not long after by a late season snowstorm that drops 8 inches of snow on the hyacinths,  you want nothing more than to book a flight to Florida, sure that you will never see summer again.  I get that.

But I have a different plan, being the totally ungrateful California resident that I am.  Some folks go to Florida, or California, or the south of France in the winter.  Not me.  My dreams for the future include a month in Chicago in January; perhaps a cabin on an icy lake in Lake County; perhaps a condo on Lake Shore Drive, where I can walk down to Lake Michigan and marvel at storm waves that have frozen midway through their break upon the shore. I will find a place to ice skate on a lake, not on an indoor rink (although skating on the rink under the stars at Yosemite Valley beats ice skating ANYWHERE…). I will hunker down and pray for a big storm.

I always wanted to be a winter bride – white velvet and white lace and white fur and royal velvet bridesmaid dresses with heavy lace trim.  White stephanotis and deep red roses and evergreen flowers.  It wasn’t meant to be that way in the end, but underneath the California woman is an Illinois girl.  And yes, I remember.