cold snap

Winter is hard in Minnesota; it’s been below zero (quite a bit below zero) more days than not over the past few weeks.  It’s not so bad when you can get outside and cross country ski or snowshoe or ice fish or whatever is your winter activity (and you’d better get one if you don’t have one up here), but when you are trapped inside it gets hard.  I spent the better part of two evenings last week dreaming of trips to Maui and Bali.  I even went so far as to create a couple trips on a travel website, getting temptingly close at the payment page to entering my credit card information.  I feel bad for my son’s Kindergarten teacher, last week there was NO outside recess all week…imagine NO recess for a class of 23 Kindergartners, the majority of them boys who need to run a bit (or a bunch) in order to concentrate for the rest of the day.  Everywhere you go, people lament….

“Why do we live here?”

“Why do I live in this god forsaken place?”

“If it weren't for my (fill in the blank here….husband, family, job, mortgage), I’d move somewhere warm,”

“I HATE winter, I mean, I can handle the snow but I can’t stand this COLD weather.  At least when it’s warmer you can get outside and (fill in the blank….fish, ski, breathe without freezing your lungs).”

All of this accompanies living in the land of four seasons, along with the constant chatter about the weather.  Minnesotan’s love to talk about the weather, commiserate, rehash old storms and seasons and in general, weave it deeply into the fabric of our lives.  If you read back through my posts, that is evident and I’m not even an old timer at coffee. 

When I think of my life, I don’t think of it as months or dates, but rather seasons….

“He died in the spring,”

“I’ve had fall babies,”

“Four winters ago we moved in to our new house,”

And so on and so forth.

So, back to my original thought, winter is hard here.  I get a little stir crazy, which is typically accompanied by learning a new hobby, planning fake vacations (which someday I will actually punch that credit card number in and go on).  We eat hot dishes and watch old movies; I have a stack of paperbacks on my nightstand to work through.  Sometimes we play chess or Monopoly.  We go to bed early; we snuggle in cozy blankets, and generally hunker down.  Then the cold snap passes and it warms up a tad, and slowly like a hibernating bear we poke our heads out, bundle up and head outside.  We snowshoe and ski, we sled and ice fish.  My husband recently pulled his old snowmobile out from the woods and got it running again…it’s from when he was in high school 16 years ago, I’m not sure if it is considered VINTAGE quite yet.  He pulls the boys on the sled round and round the field.  Then after a couple hours and rosy cheeks we trek inside, hanging the wet, snowy winter clothes all around the mudroom, swinging the children over the already forming water puddles so their wool socks don’t get wet and have hot cocoa and generally hunker down.  Yes, winter is hard here, but it’s also quite magical.  A time when I become a bit turned inward and spend lots of time cozy with my family dreaming of summer, talk about buying a boat, what lakes I want to kayak and looking through seed catalogs….a great country life lived in four seasons.