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Angela In America: Enough With This Winter
Why winter feels harder this year — from collective crankiness to managing our thoughts
“No winter lasts forever; no spring skips its turn.” — Hal Borland
Childhood Snow Days
I’ve always prided myself on having a resilience in winter. After all, as kids we seemed to weather every storm, building forts in 15-foot snowdrifts, playing “king of the hill,” making snow angels in our poofy snowsuits that made moving even an arm up and down a chore.
I remember playing outside in the snow for hours. The sting of a snowball hitting hard on my cheek. Making a snow cave with the neighborhood kids using real ice for “windows.” And then the sweet reward: hot chocolate with whipped cream. I can still see my 12-year-old hands, pink-red (probably borderline frostbite), cupping that hot chocolate in our toasty kitchen. My sister, brother and I sporting flushed faces and excitement — that is, after the tedious “unlayering” of our snow-caked clothing and boots, a ritual that took a while.
Surviving and thriving through a snowstorm used to feel more like a badge of courage than a messy chore for Mom. Now, a single snowflake seems to make everyone apoplectic. What has changed over time? Are we now “soft on winter”?
I never cared for the cold, but as an adult, I always felt there is a beauty to the winter season — the stillness, the quiet, the bare rawness. A signal to slow down. The goal: to endure, to hunker down, to reset. And we emerge in the spring like a tree that sprouts green after gray — new again. I like the lower expectations of the season. Stay home. Chill. Literally.
After all, it’s a no-win to be weather-driven. We all know it deep down. Mother Nature does her thing. And when she’s in a mood … watch out. Sure, we have fun with the groundhog. Shadow, no shadow. Winter folklore and folly — it’s “an event,” something to get people out of the house. We forgive the obvious: that we didn’t need a groundhog to tell us we are in for more winter. It’s in the air. We feel it, yet we are desperate for a sign of hope. Anything.
Can Any Person, Animal. or Radar Accurately Predict The Weather?
What does The Farmer’s Almanac say (spring will be warmer this year than usual!)? How about The Weather Channel? Sure, another storm is a-coming. Or the last-ditch neighborhood psychic with the neon sign in the window (“I see … an ‘S’ word. Could it be … ‘snow’ … or ‘spring’ or (let me finish the ‘S’ word for you) ‘sick of it’?”).
Yes, blah, blah. Spring will arrive, eventually. But how much accuracy can we expect from a groundhog, a farmer, or a Doppler radar? (I’m betting on the farmer.)
What can’t be predicted? Just how bad the reaction will be to one more weather report calling for extreme ice, bitter cold, whipping winds and more snow — at least this season.
I have never seen such crankiness and intolerance over the weather (in myself and everyone I know) than I have this winter. Why is that?
Our Collective Seasonal Crankiness, Cranked Up
Maybe I happen to have extra-cranky friends. Maybe with age, I’m cranky and losing my fight. Maybe it’s expectation. We haven’t had horrible winters in recent history, at least not like some of us remember. Maybe it’s the harsh, horrible news cycle. (I know I’m not alone in trying to solve the disappearance of Savannah Guthrie’s mom. I want to join a SWAT team and bring Nancy home. I am losing sleep, Googling TMZ 50 times a day, obsessed and concerned with this awful, unfathomable story.)
Something about this winter is affecting our collective psyches.
The Snowy Outrage Texts
It snowed again last night in New York. Light, only a couple of inches. And now, the outraged texts and photos showing “the horror!” of fresh white stuff covering cars and lawns are comin’ in fast:
“Can you believe this? Again??? I can’t!!!!”
The spring equinox is only 30-something days away, but you know what? We’re done.
Enough of this winter. We need a break. It’s too cold. We are not Fargo people. We are dopamine-deprived, and it’s showing. Not everyone is sitting by a pool at The Colony Hotel in Palm Beach, in between Botox appointments and philanthropic galas (not that there’s anything wrong with that …).
Getting Through the Discontent of Winter
So how do we muster the strength to get through the season without springing for a pricey getaway trip to the Caribbean?
My wise and feisty father would say, “You need to manage your thoughts.” Very true advice. And words that have carried me through many a challenging time.
His sister, my strong godmother, Aunt Palma, used to say, “What’s the sense of complaining?”
Well, for one thing, because it makes us feel better to complain. Aunt Palma was right, though. It doesn’t change much, if anything, to complain, but we do it anyway — anything to avoid doing whatever we need to do or take care of, but never seem to get around to accomplishing. You know, those pesky things we can control.
How many times have you said, “Gee, I wish I could get more order in this house?” Or even, “How about that glove compartment in my car? What’s in there?” But even something as mindless as cleaning out that mismatched sock drawer, messy junk drawer or cluttered closet feels like a heavy lift this winter.
If there was ever an excuse to knock off some items on your “to-do” list, it would be during one of those “schools are closed” snow days.
But did that happen this winter? No. Of course not. With sidewalks iced up, driveways and walkways snowed in, the kids running around like lunatics or glued to their iPads demanding more hot chocolate, we did what anyone would do when stuck home and faced with a “hazardous conditions” news flash: we called out for pizza.
Carb Comfort
In Manhattan, I stopped counting the empty pizza boxes piled on the endless mounds of garbage towering next to the mounds of dirty snow and boxed-in vehicles waiting for pickup. Believe me, I have contributed my share of pizza boxes. Once carb-conscious, now I can’t stop justifying the cheesy, gooey stuff — with mushrooms, without mushrooms, Margherita-style, whole wheat crust when I feel extra guilty. La Mia Pizza is now on speed dial. Pathetic. Sometimes I order a salad with grilled chicken to offset the carb concoctions.
In the suburbs — or “the country,” as we like to call it — the recycle bins are filled with takeout tins and more boxes. Pizza takeout, Chinese food takeout, Stouffer’s takeout. Anything — just take us out of this frigid misery.
To be fair, some of us used our snowstorm time to cook up homemade soup or bake a fresh meatloaf. Congratulations. If a snow day did that for you — prompted you to bake an apple pie or make a pizza from scratch instead of challenging a poor Uber Eats delivery person to bring you a grandma slice with extra cheese in subzero-degree weather — then you should get an award for kindness and ingenuity.
At this point, Uber Eats should be renamed Uber Feats, surpassing what is the unofficial motto of the U.S. Postal Service: “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” Same for Amazon, pedaling around in those mini delivery carts, freezing, so you can get your summer bathing suits in time for that St. Barts splurge you just booked. That is, unless someone steals your package.
From Snowstorms to Survival Mode
What’s the point? We know we can’t control the weather, but that doesn’t stop us from expressing our collective outrage over every wind chill and slippery storm. If anything, it makes us feel connected. In that, there is comfort.
We are not alone on a chilly island. We are in this together. We will help each other get through — whether through crankiness, or complaining, or carb consumption. Or by managing our thoughts, because our thoughts — and how we react to “what is” — are powerful.
Just think: When August rolls around, and the traffic in the Hamptons is brutal, and the heat wave is melting your mind because the AC went out, this brutal winter will be just a blip in the memory banks, replaced with a new season of challenges.
Mother Nature. Human nature. Stay the course.
