Must be an out-of-towner

Winter is on my body in ways that I’d forgotten. My skin whitens and cracks open, harsh and bleeding no matter how many bandages I put on or how much cream it drinks in at night. I slather on the St. Ives after a shower to warm me, and pull up long socks to keep it from rubbing away on the bedsheets while I sleep. Static pokes hello at me every time I pass the filing cabinet at work. Cold air is sucked into my sinuses, freezing every tiny hair in my nose, clearing my throat, and banging at the backs of my eyes. I bare my teeth when the wind is up, and feel like I’ve bitten a Popsicle.

Acclimatization. It’s January and I’ve made the seasonal shift that redefines what a “nice” day is, and leave my coat open to bask in 25-degree weather. The snow is ugly, brown on top from where the plows turned it over, and slick from a cycle of melting and freezing. I’ve fallen over a lot more than I’d care to admit, and even the neighbor’s dog laughed at me the other afternoon. Stupid dog and his stupid haircut.

If you ever wanted to gain or lose faith in humanity, winter is the time to do it. The longest night of the year was back in December, so there is more and more light when I walk through the city on my way home. I try to imagine the white and pink sunset clouds as the edge of a mountain range that sprung up somewhere south, maybe taking over Lakeville and presenting us with our very own amazing horizon. I would mistake the mountains in Colorado and Japan for clouds sometimes. But after the sun drops alarmingly quickly, you’re left to shutter up inside, wrap up in every blanket and just wait to sleep. You watch other people sleepwalk in their houses; dinner, TV, re-shelve a book, touch a child on the head.

Even my enormous mittens over my eyes can’t convince me this isn’t real. The stacked up outdoor furniture by the dumpster, buried in a snowdrift, reminded me, “In six months, the sun will be up at 5:30, and won’t go down until 10pm. Your bare arms will fall in love with the sky again, and the spring joy of throwing open windows to leaf-rustling sweet wind is closer than you think.”

It’s a well-intentioned patio set, and I’m sure we’ll have some good times in the summer when I’m in bare feet and soft grass and cool beer. But “closer than you think?” How corny and, more to the point, get real. Haven’t you heard of February? Are you not from around here?