Pass the Shovel?

With only three days left until we board the plane to spend Christmas in California, it happened just in time. We awoke this morning to see a powdered-sugar dusting of snow covering our front yard. We ate breakfast and drank coffee, watching the two neighbor cats make tracks in the thickening blanket covering our back deck. I walked out to get the mail and watched white flakes swirl around me. It didn’t amount to much, but it was better than nothing.

I must admit I was becoming increasingly piqued by the lack of “real weather.” Craig spent last week in San Diego, attending a conference in forty-degree weather, while I sat on the couch with the windows open and let a pleasant, seventy-five degree breeze air our house. I drove to work in the mornings through a low fog that burned off around nine a.m. and endured gray days of constant showers. If I didn’t look outside to see the brick houses, I wouldn’t know I’d ever left California.

I was born in South Dakota, so snow was a part of my very early childhood. My mom fondly tells a story of bundling baby me into the back seat of the car, a blanket over my carrier so I wouldn't catch cold. When the blanket was removed upon arrival by someone I didn't know, I screamed shrilly at the stranger invading my cozy privacy. I remember playing outside in the snow, and my mom bringing tubs of snow inside in severe weather so my brother and I could stand on a chair at the sink and make castles and log cabins out of the cold droplets. I am sure that school closures and snow days were in my past even though I don't remember them. We moved to Modesto when I was six years old. With us came our huge, flat-bottomed snow shovel, and if it had only been kept for twenty-two more years I am sure it would have been presented to Craig and me before we moved. As it was, it lingered unused in the garage for five years before being given away.

“Well, if you don’t like the weather in Kentucky, just wait a day and it’ll be different,” says one of my coworkers. The long- time residents, the hardened veterans of some really scary winters, tell me I should be glad that this winter has been mild so far. They tell me stories, half-shuddering and half-boasting over the winters they’ve seen. Most stories I hear are about the dreaded ice storm of 2002.

“It basically closed down the whole town for eight days,” says a co-worker. “We had no power, and no means of getting power because the ice had snapped the power cables to most people's houses. Before the city could restore electricity, they had to check street by street to make sure everyone had fixed their cables.”

“I came down with the flu on the first day of the storm,” says another. “All I could do was lie in bed with seventeen blankets on top of me and watch the tree outside my window. A branch the size of a pencil would have three inches of ice around it. The branches broke, making a sound like the house was falling down. Many older, familiar trees had to be cut down after the storm.”

“The city sold out of kerosene heaters, bacon, and eggs on the first day. A friend who just moved to Lexington from Los Angeles kept calling me because she was afraid of being alone in her freezing apartment. One night she said it was forty degrees inside and she wanted to know if she would die if she fell asleep,” pipes in another, overhearing us.

“Okay, I know I don’t want THAT much weather, just enough to make me feel like I’m really a Lexingtonian,” I reply.

My first Kentucky snow two weeks ago didn’t exactly have the air of romance I’d been expecting. I looked outside my window at work one Tuesday morning at 11 a.m. to count twelve flakes, none of which I caught on my tongue because I was indoors. Rushing out the door to twirl in circles on the concrete walk probably would’ve been frowned upon, even though everyone knows that I am from California and should therefore be expected to do strange things.

This morning Craig and I took turns standing outside in the falling snow, snapping pictures to take with us for our families in California. I had expected to come home for Christmas armed with “weather stories” to tell our friends. I checked the level of antifreeze in our car to make sure we were prepared for plummeting temperatures. We made sure all of our outside faucets had safety features to keep them from freezing. Our winter clothes are organized in bins in the front closet, but instead I can still get by on the morning drive without a coat. After mentally preparing for Kentucky weather, I feel a bit cheated, but at least I haven't had to buy a snow shovel.