A rainy Christmas Day leads to thoughts of snow... and memories flow
- Michelle Wood: SWCD
- January 4, 2010
- 813
Living down here in hurricane country, close to the coast, I'm always amused when the TV weather-readers begin raising the hue and cry when a tropical depression is, say, 450 nautical miles out to sea.
The Atlantic Ocean isn't a paved freeway and it's very seldom that storms travel in a straight line, like a bowling ball let loose around the lesser Antilles, something that's going to pack a predictable punch. Most of the time, these cells rotate and change course randomly, like a pinball.
Or a politician facing reelection.
When it comes to weather, I'm a walk-outside kind of guy. If I shiver, it's cold. If I sweat, it's hot.
And if I get wet, it's raining.
That's what the weather pros had been calling for all week... and, well, they were right. "Highs around 60," I kept hearing, "and a good chance of showers."
Well, it rained all day, so that was better than a good chance.
It was a simple, solid, serious soaking.
One of the things that kept running through my mind as my wife and I opened presents and collaborated on a fine holiday meal was that if it had only been 35 degrees colder, we'd have been up to our elbows in snow.
How great would that have been?
Most transplants who have settled hereabouts seem to have come from the North and Midwest and a lot of them - perhaps most - have done so to escape the bitter winters back home. They golf on Christmas Eve, they pedal their recumbent bikes on New Year's, and they sail their boats on Groundhog Day... they tool around in their convertibles (tops down) whenever the spirit moves them.
My wife and I saw one such driver the day after Christmas, when it was in the low 40s.
"Maybe his top is broken," she said.
"No way," I said. "He's probably got family down from Long Island or Pennsylvania. He's just showing off."
"But it's kind of cold," my wife said.
"He's going to send them back home with a memory," I said, "so they can tell their friends that they saw the sights in a convertible sports car the day after Christmas."
No, it's not like coming back to Northeast Ohio from Jamaica with a golden tan and enough tropical tales to entertain audiences until spring's first robin, but it's not bad.
Which is precisely what my best friend and I did 31 winters ago. We booked a flight from Columbus to Montego Bay ($232) and spent a week in Negril, pure and unspoiled and rustic and wonderful. I think our room cost $50 for the week.
He'd go off cliff diving or some such thing and I'd spend the day on that white-sand beach, just drinking in the atmosphere and the Red Stripe, looking forward to dinner in a tin-roofed restaurant where you could get two whole lobsters for five bucks. Live reggae, succulent lobsters, turtle soup... beyond belief.
It was 90 when we flew out... and 10 below when we landed.
"We lost 100 degrees," I said, after the pilot had announced the conditions in Port Columbus. "That's nasty."
"Welcome home," said my friend, as we trudged through the parking lot. "Looks like we'll have to dig out my car."
"I'd rather walk to the beach," I said.
And yet, as I stared out the windows in the sunroom last Friday night, having tucked in my wife with a Christmas kiss, I couldn't help but wish for snow.
The last time we had a significant accumulation, I took a long walk, marveling at being able to see my footprints and remembering the ice-skating rink in my hometown and how, as an eighth-grader, my girlfriend and I held hands (well, gloved hands) as we made our way around the frozen surface of the pond. And the aroma of the wood-burning stove, with benches all around it and the sizzle and scent of those long-ago evenings.
I packed a snowball and took into the bedroom and placed it, quite gently, against the side of my wife's face.
She awoke with a start.
"Hey!" she said.
"Shhh," I said, holding up the snowball. "It's just a little reminder of home."
I hope the forecasters guess right when they call for even a dusting early in the new year.
Maybe I could convince a neighbor to take a drive around town in his convertible... with the top down, of course.
Mike Dewey can be e-mailed at CarolinamikeD@aol.com or snail-mailed at 6211 Cardinal Dr., New Bern, NC 28560.