February: Snow [Fukubukuro 2010]

I don’t like snow. This isn’t a secret to anyone who’s met me since I went away to university. Growing up in Florida made snow something of a novelty to me once. It was fun to experience every couple of years. Fun to get a day off from school once in Oregon. Fun to go skiing a couple of times in my life.

They there’s snow like the snowpocalypse of 2010. You know, the storm that knocked the state of Maryland out of commission for practically a full week? The one that started right on my birthday? The one that had me stranded in my apartment for days at a time?

I prepared for the second wave of it by stockpiling lots of food, lots of movies, and lots of Min, but that doesn’t mean it was easy! You can only get by stuck within the apartment with no escape for so long before the cabin fever sets in. It’s a good thing Eric lives so near, because I didn’t have a shovel and my apartment complex was terrible at clearing the snow out of my parking lot.

More than anything I think I hate snow because it’s this blanket that changes the way everything looks. It stifles out life with its cold and creates this sameness that is inescapable. No matter where you look it’s either white or it’s black and white (and gross). Snow is selfish and a bit of an attention whore. You can’t see anything but snow while it’s around and even if it weren’t there, everything would still be dead anyway.

They say that the cold death of winter helps us appreciate spring and summer that much more. I think it’s true. The lack of seasons was something I really took for granted down in Florida. We didn’t lose our leaves, it just dropped to the 50s or, god forbid, the 40s while we wore sweaters and all of our foliage stayed alive.

Now I find myself thankful when the flowers begin to bloom and the weather begins to turn for the better. Things like heat and humidity, mild annoyances in my youth, become the great portents of spring and summer, my favorite two seasons. Meanwhile, Labor Day has taken on a new meaning. What once was a day off from school has now become the signal for the end of summer. Now melancholy sets in once again until spring, glorious spring, arrives anew.