Each Day Already is a Challenge

I Don't Do Winter

I say that a bunch. "I don't do winter." But it wasn't until this morning's COLD that I started to really remember why.

When I think about how I hate snow and cold, I usually have this memory of being about three or four. Mom stuffed me into a snowsuit and sent me outdoors to play. She was convinced that kids needed sunshine even in winter. I shivered on the porch and cried and she finally let me back inside, and I sat on the radiator trying to get warm. Yes, that's the memory that always surfaces when I think about my disdain for winter.



When hubby and I both have to leave the house in the morning - he to go on to work and me to pick up my son from work - he scrapes the frost, snow or ice from my car's windows while his car heats up. Today was no different, but he forgot to scrape the front passenger window.

I started my car, then got out to scrape the window. I had wisely layered my clothing. In fact, I put my clothes on over my fleece pajamas. I also wore hat and gloves. I only had to scrape one window, then sit inside the car as it warmed up. But when I got back into the car, I was breathless.

That's when I remembered why I really hate winter cold and snow. It's that bitter cold and wind that does me in. Suddenly I remembered being an elementary kid and having to walk in the bitter cold and wind, being bundled up with a woolen scarf around my neck and my hood pulled tight. Only my eyes showed through. The walk to the bus stop was almost a mile, and by the time I got there I thought I would die. Being in the bitter cold took my breath away.

I remembered the driveway of my childhood home. It was sloped, really sloped, and made of bricks or stone. Bricks, I think. Can you imagine how slippery that driveway would be just being wet?

One winter we got about two feet of snow and with the wind gusts, there were mounds of snow against our house that were probably four foot tall!

I must have been about eight years old. That would have made my brother Bill four and my sister Carol two years old. That's how I picture us the winter of the big snow.

I think our driveway was still made of brick back then, but I'm not sure. It might have been paved with concrete. But that doesn't really matter.

The memory surfaced because I remember being breathless that day as well. My father could not get to work that day, at least not early in the morning. He and mother both had to work on shoveling the driveway, but to do that we all had to be outside with them. Hmmm. My grandmother used our house as her home base, but traveled to visit her other five children throughout the year. She must have been visiting at that time.

Mom, Dad and I had normal sized snow shovels. Bill and Carol had smaller kiddie shovels. And as a family, we set to work shoveling snow. Dad started at the end of the driveway near the street; the rest of us were near the house.

I remember being really short of breath a bunch that day and having to stop and rest quite frequently. It must have been the bitter cold and wind that caused that, just like it did today.

We're expecting snow this afternoon. Supposedly, the snow should start in mid-afternoon and by rush hour the snow may reach three to five inches.

Of course, the meteorologists have not had a very good track record this year about predictions. It may begin snowing earlier. We may only have a snow dusting. It may begin snowing later in the evening. But...having seen the radar picture the meteorologists are viewing, I do think they're right about getting some snow. It appears that it's already dumping the white stuff in Illinois and Indiana and heading this way.

Oh boy. I really don't do winter...