Favorite Philosopher's Blog

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.

It is again 100 degrees here in California, and I wish I had a lake I could jump into tonight.

It’s really a miracle I like to swim at all.  I was a skinny little girl and didn’t have an ounce of fat to hold me up in the water.   We took swimming lessons at our little lake in Illinois.  It was a private lake and there were few houses at the time, but I was so shy that even knowing all the kids in the swimming lesson class, it was torture for me to be in an organized group instead of just splashing around in the water having fun.   It was essential, of course, but I hated it nevertheless.   Especially when it was an overcast day – we’d all stand there shivering with our lips turning blue. That didn’t happen too often, but I remember it very clearly.   Blue lips!   At any rate I learned how to swim in spite of it all, and was glad when I didn’t have to go on.  Of course there were kids with big shoulders and long arms and they were the stars, and the teacher’s favorites and they thought they were hot stuff and went on to life saving and all that.   My only goal was to be allowed to swim out to the raft, where all the fun happened.

You could jump off the raft and if you held your legs straight and went down like a bullet you could sink down a foot into the muddy bottom.   It’s amazing what kids will do without a second thought – I cannot possibly imagine having the nerve now to allow my legs to go into that mush.  Again, I can remember the feel of it and we’d come up laughing and bragging, eyes big, about how far down our feet went.  Gives me shivers to think about it really.   Ewwww.

I never did learn to dive off the diving board though.  They taught us to dive by sitting us on the end of the pier, put out hands over our heads and stuck our head between our legs and then we “dove” in – more like falling in head first.  Eventually this progressed to supposedly the same movement standing up.  I more often belly flopped.  I am very happy jumping into water thank you very much, and I always holds my nose when I do.

One day as a teenager I got the idea to swim across the lake.  It is probably a distance of half a mile, but I had never done it before, so it was probably a bit foolish to try, even if my shoulders were a little bigger and I had developed…um…floating devices.   My favorite swimming stroke to this day is the elementary backstroke, which involves a froggy kick and sweeping your arms up the side of your body as if you are taking off your shirt, then making a “T” and bringing your arms back down to your sides, a lovely graceful movement that is easy and makes you glide across the surface.   The elementary backstroke was taught to us as a “resting” stroke and indeed, it works every time, even in the near drowning situation in Hawaii a couple of years ago. 

So I started off across the lake.  I still remember that day, too, with great fondness.  I was all by myself in the middle of the lake, crawling, breast stroking and elementary backstroking my way across the lake.  It remains one of the favorite moments of my life.  Totally alone, no noise but my own breathing, the gentle slap of the water against my face, the sense of power and courage that emerged from my always-sort-of-scared self.  I was blessed that day, in the middle of that lake. 

That is where I return when I lap swim now.  I forget that I am looking at cement and smelling chlorine.  I only see the trees awaiting me on the opposite shore, the gentle green-blue waves with a glint of sunlight on each one, the earthy smell of the lake water calming me.  I only hear my breathing, the sloosh of the water, my body gliding along effortlessly.  (I took a lesson before I began lap swimming from a local instructor, and he told me I should be feeling like I am swimming downhill, then I know I am doing it correctly, and also “this isn’t the Olympics, Mary – slow down, enjoy yourself.”) This is why I am ecstatic that my gym has a pool that is opening within the next week.  Sometimes I have to actually stop myself from continuing lest I not be able to move the next day, because I get into such a hypnotic state.   

When I am feeling down, a walk at the reservoir, a yoga class, Zumba, and God knows the treadmill just won’t cut it.  I want nothing more than to get into the pool and let my imagination take me back to the little green lake under the Illinois sky, and I swim back and forth, back and forth, and before you know it the water has swept away the tearful tension in my eyes and my blues are left behind in the water as I climb out and face life on land again.