I’d like to live in a place with seasons,” my husband, Ron, said, and I knew the East Coast had infiltrated his brain.
I argued that we kind of have seasons here, at least the ones that count, you know “mild,” and “summer.”
That was the problem, he explained.
Two years ago, Ron’s job had him traveling so much and for so long that he actually got to witness the seasons change on the East Coast. “It was incredible,” he said. He described driving along lush, green tree-lined roads during the warm summer days and watching as a blaze of orange and then red slowly crept into the green until those roads looked like a fiery trail.
Those trees shed their fall cloaks and with bare, gnarled branches embraced the crisp bite of winter until they were feathered in white. And every day was one that I “should come out and see.”
Instead, and I know it’s a bit shallow, for me it was another day on the beach. Another day not having wet socks, not having to dig around for gloves, not having to peel off heavy layers of clothing in a hurry because I have to pee.
Ron longs for the seasons.
Though I don’t envy having to bundle up to keep my skin from getting chapped, I do kind of regret not having been there to see that beauty.
What’s kept me in place was the snow.
With snow, I have the same relationship I have with kittens. Snow is beautiful and fluffy and it looks so pretty you want to scoop it up into your arms, but then you get frostbite. Kittens tend to be pretty frosty to me and just tend to scratch and bite me. Every single time.
The first time I went skiing, I was about 19 and so excited about it. I had the cute outfit, stood in the long line to get fitted for skis, and rode to the top of the ski lift with anticipation. Then, as I tried to get off of the ski lift, something—I still can’t define what—happened. It was like Mother Nature pulled the doormat of Earth’s crust beneath me, and I landed straight on the back of my head.
My body and legs followed next with a hollow thump on the hard-packed ice beneath me. As I lay there with arms and legs spread Snow Angel-style, I saw various articles of my clothing strewn around the snow. Far around in the snow.
Snow didn’t seem to like me much.
Years later, I went with Ron, and after a few trips I got the hang of snowboarding, but it definitely wasn’t on the first try. On our first trip I started off on the bunny slope (I was still very wary of the ski lift). I didn’t actually board down the slope—I tumbled, head over feet, over head. Over and over until I decided to resign myself and give into the tumble. I tumbled right into a man and his young son.
Both of them stood there mouths agape. The dad was holding a video camera. The kid asked, “Whoa, dad did you get that shot?”
I very femininely dusted snow off my clothes, positioned my sunglasses back over my eyes, made a nasty face into the man’s camera, grabbed my board and stomped off to get a beer. It took several trips for me to master the snow but I did. Then we stopped going.
Until a few weeks ago.
We pulled out our gear and headed north, took the kids to Tahoe, and found a ski resort. I kept in mind Ron’s perspective about the beauty of the seasons and got busy taking pictures and trying to embrace the cold, snowy scenes.
Outside of the car, I got the kids outfitted with their long underwear, thick socks, gloves, glasses, and snow gear. Then, my husband and the boys waited impatiently for me to get my gear on. I only got as far as my pink long underwear when I realized things had changed since the last time we went snowboarding, namely, my weight.
I sat in the passenger seat trying in vain to get my long underwear over my thighs. I pulled, wiggled, and even took a moment to envision my hips being 30 pounds lighter and four kids narrower but nothing worked. As Ron and the kids started to knock on the window and urge me to hurry, I gave up and tried to pull them off but I couldn’t get them over my calves.
Ron opened the door and snorted in an “it figures” kind of way, but try as I might I couldn’t pull them off. With my family crowded around me rolling their eyes and upset about the delay, I was forced to do the one thing that would make the situation even more embarrassing: I grabbed the scissors from my son’s emergency craft kit and cut myself out of the long underwear.
I quickly dressed in my remaining gear and no one said a word as we walked to the resort, but all I could think was that the snow got me again. Seasons may be beautiful, but I prefer my winter with a warm breeze, and waves not slopes.
Shelley Cone can be reached through Managing Editor Camillia Lanham at clanham@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Feb 19-26, 2015.