You know those romances where you become so involved in the continuous cycle of breaking up and making up that any normal healthy relationship seems preposterous? That is, in an essence, my relationship to the cold.
The good times were spent making snowmen, going ice skating, sledding on the golf course, going home to a toasty house and sipping hot chocolate. The bad times were my parents refusing to turn up the thermostat while I walked around the house in an oversized cheap sweatshirt and itchy wool socks. It was also being incredibly frustrated with the hot-blooded polar bears that roll down their car window all the way, leave the door open and put the fan on full blast. And it was shoveling our landing-strip of a driveway until my hands were cemented cold and battling the Boston winters on my frozen metal bicycle.
Now that I live in Los Angeles, I miss the cold. We broke up several years ago and it hasn’t been the same since. Over time, my closet has been purged of all the scarfs, gloves and long underwear. A black fleece ski jacket is the only remaining item I’ve been unable to shake from the clutches of my harping closet.
The cold I experience here is a more of a dull annoyance than those passionate winter months that you think will never end. Many houses in southern California are ill-equipped with insulation or proper heating. Also, it is difficult to find decent wind-proof, cold weather gear for the handful of chilling evenings.
Tonight is an especially brisk night and I’m considered doubling my bed blankets to avoid goosebumps from the drafty single-pane window nearby. When I close my eyes tonight, I’ll think of those New England months that I long to complain about.