Winter Wonderlands

Ms. Rachow says that global warming came much too late to save her and her husband from childhoods in the snow.

My husband must be forgiven his love of snow. He grew up near the North Pole on that solid block of ice known as Canada. There a snowstorm meant the weather had warmed up and spring was on its way. That’s his story and he’s sticking with it.
I’m from the slightly warmer land of Nebraska where we had only ten months of blizzards each year.
One of the things we both love about winter in Santa Barbara is it’s semi-tropical…except for the occasional artistic sprinkling of white on the Santa Ynez Mountains.
I wouldn’t even know about this “decorator” snow, except when it arrives, my hubby drags me out of a cozy bed to ooh and aah the wonderful sight. I try to be pleased, but to me the perfect winter wonderland is beach sand and palm trees.
Once my hubby sees that snow glistening, he waxes nostalgic about how when he was a kid his mother bundled him up in a parka and sent him out on an iceberg to play with Wally, his pet walrus. At least that’s his story and he’s sticking with it.
Then I must counter with the story about the blizzard of ’69 when we lost Gramps. He went out to the barn to feed the cattle and didn’t come back. We figured he was frozen out there, and we’d find him in the spring. We were half right. Gramps didn’t freeze, but he did show up in May because it got too hot for him in Florida.
When my husband and I were kids, we didn’t dream of the idea of being able to move to a warmer climate. We figured we had no choice but to freeze in winter, and so we made good use of the ice and snow.
Inspired by the story of Frosty, I built a snowman and imagined if I did a good enough job, my Frosty would also come to life and dance around. Unfortunately, we had no silk hats in Nebraska. I had to settle for a lopsided pile of dirty snow wearing the straw hat I’d swiped from a scarecrow.
When my big brother caught me making this snowman he called me a sissy. “I’ll show you the proper use of snow,” he yelled. His snowball hit me square in the face. “And no running and crying ‘Mommy, Mommy,’ or there’s more where this one came from.”
My husband claims it was much too cold to make snowballs up there near the Arctic Circle. “But there were other dangers,” he says. “One time I sat on what I thought was a pile of ice. Turns out it was a polar bear. Wally saved me from being eaten. What a walrus!” That’s his story and he’s sticking with it.
One thing my husband and I had in common was sledding. In his case, Wally pulled his sled across the ice. And in Nebraska we zoomed down hills on wooden sleds with metal runners.
When I got my first sled, my brother warned me, “Don’t ever put your tongue on the frame.”
On my first day out, I kept thinking that a little touch with my tongue on the cold metal would feel very nice. As I trudged to the top of the hill, I couldn’t get the idea out of my head. Just the tip. What could it hurt?
And before you could say “thupid wittle kid” my tongue was stuck. Super Glue doesn’t hold as tightly as my tongue was affixed to that frozen metal. I had to walk all the way home with that dang sled connected to my tongue, and I thill have a hint of a lisp to prove ith.
“Did you ever do anything dumb like that?” I ask my husband.
He sticks out his tongue and shows me his scar. “Yeth.”
Apparently in both Canada and Nebraska, living through childhood was a matter of the survival of the idiots.
Somehow we both survived our frostbitten youths and lived long enough to find our way to this little village by the sea where holiday lights sparkle in the palm trees. And, of course there’s a photo of a beloved walrus above our fireplace.
Once in a while we see that dusting of white on the mountains…but from a safe distance. A beautiful sight, yes, but when friends call to ask if we want to go make a snowman, we say, “Snow thanks.”
That’s our story and we’re sticking with it.
First published in the Montecito Journal January 24, 2008