Searching for my first apartment in Los Angeles thirty"'eight years ago, I was surprised to see a heater on the wall. Just a few weeks earlier, I had departed New York with all my belongings in the car and the temperature on the bank thermometer approaching zero degrees. With the wind chill, it felt like minus ten degrees Fahrenheit. With an average daytime temperature of sixty-eight degrees in February, why would I need a heater in Los Angeles?
By the time the next winter rolled around, I was regularly turning on the heater, especially to chase away the morning chill. It had not taken long for me to acclimate to the climate of my new home and reset what I considered to be cold.
As time continued to pass, Southern California's climate became my norm. At first, I missed the constant cycle of four distinct seasons, but the opportunity to decorate for Christmas while wearing shorts was a worthwhile tradeoff. I certainly did not miss having to shovel snow or drive through it to get to work.
Our family's move last year to Washington State meant that time would no longer be marked by the fire season and periods when rain is a remote possibility. The four seasons had returned to my life.
As temperatures dropped and trees lost their leaves, I braced for the cold that I had left behind thirty"'eight years ago. Though Washington's climate is more temperate than New York's, snow was still a possibility, and the white stuff and I had not departed on good terms back in 1988.
But when the snow did fall, it felt more like an old friend than an enemy I had bumped into. Waking up to find my lawn unexpectedly covered-- it had not even been forecast-- I found myself uttering the word "wow." It looked so peaceful and made me feel like a kid again.
The snowfall was extremely wet, making for excellent snowball-making material. Unfortunately, being gently pelted by a snowball only confused my two daughters on the autism spectrum, and I could not persuade them to join in on the fun. It made me miss the sister who had followed me from New York, but whom I had left behind in California. Our snowball fights in New York were epic, at least the way I remember them.
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