Too Warm For Snow

I just looked at the weather app on my phone and saw that the temperature outside is 80 degrees.  I cringed.  It’s not that I hate 80 degree temperatures (though, I do…), it’s just that they have their time and place, and right now, here, in Central Maryland, is not it.  It’s still February, which is Winter around these parts, and 80 degrees is anything but normal.

My parents both love cold weather; Mom even more so as she’s gotten older.  But they both have always loved late Fall and Winter.  I also love the cold (and snow), and it goes far beyond any influence my parents had on me.  Maybe it’s a genetic thing, since my daughter is also this way.  I’ve given this a lot of thought over the years, and while it is likely ingrained in my DNA, I think there were other influences that only emphasized my love of the cold.

When I was a kid, I think my love of snow came from the high possibility that we might get a day off from school.  School was always fairly easy for me, and my grades were good to great, but I never really enjoyed it, and if snow kept us home, then that was a good thing.  And, as kids, my siblings and I (and my dad, if he was home from work with us) would play outside in the snow for hours.  We had a pretty nice sledding hill in our backyard, so that was cool, but we had snowball fights and would run around for hours, until our clothes were soaked and our legs were numb.  Then we’d go inside for hot cocoa and sit by our large family room’s fireplace to defrost, roasting marshmallows.  A few hours later, and we were back outside doing it all again.

The cold weather and possibility of snow is what keeps me positively motivated after the Holiday season, which is my favorite time of year.  Once the weather starts getting warm, and Spring arrives, I begin getting depressed.  The Spring is not a good time of year for me.  It was April 2004 when my wonderful wife, Teresa, passed away, and that was a particularly warm day.  I associate the warming of the weather at that time of the year with her death, and every year since then, when the weather starts to get warm, it causes me to feel depressed.

There's a time for 80 degree weather, and February is not it.  The snow we had over this past weekend brought excitement and happiness to my daughter and me, and it would be awesome if we could get one big snow before the end of Winter.  It doesn't look good right now, but we're hopeful.

Have a cool evening, everyone.