Reporter Ashley Foley says I'm a better writer than having to stoop so low as to write a column about the weather, so let me assure you before we begin that this may look like a column about the weather, but it actually goes much deeper than that.
Reporter Ashley Foley says I'm a better writer than having to stoop so low as to write a column about the weather, so let me assure you before we begin that this may look like a column about the weather, but it actually goes much deeper than that.
So. It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas out there. There's snow, ice, blowing wind and those of us still holding desperately to the idea that a sweater will do and the parka can stay packed away for another few weeks are beginning to redefine our priorities.
But while the weather has taught me a few important lessons about priorities, it has also taught me that perhaps as a society we are too dependent on material things.
Last week, I left my home to find my car covered in heavy wet snow. I wasn't wearing a coat, of course, dressed only in my gym attire, clutching a water bottle and my running shoes, and hopped around cursing like a sailor while digging for my car scraper, which had been retired this spring and buried under an avalanche of things in my backseat.
I found it at last, made a half-hearted effort to brush the snow from my windshield, gave up and climbed inside. There, a series of distressing betrayals really put my dependence on unnecessary materialistic things in the spotlight.
I turned the car on and hit what I thought was the rear window defroster, but no. Sunroof.
My car dutifully cranked open the sunroof, sending a heavy load of wet snow crashing onto my upholstery and my unprotected head. I shrieked and flailed around as though under attack, stabbed in the back by the sunroof I had so loved throughout the summer and fall. Then, wet, dripping, scowling, I closed the sunroof, found the proper button for the defroster, and hit the seat warmers that hadn't been turned on since April.
Nothing happened. No rush of soothing warmth, no light indicating life at all.
"Are you kidding me?" I snapped. "First the sunroof, now the seat warmers? What do you want from me, car? You really think I can survive winter with snow crashing through my sunroof and no seat warmers? This is Canada!"
As I sat shivering and scowling, watching my windshield wipers struggle to push the snow I'd been too lazy to brush off, as the defrosters lazily melted the snow on the back window, and as the heat kicked into sluggish gear and melted the chunks of snow into my hair and passenger seat, I wondered at the state of the universe where someone getting up to go to the gym before 6 am. would be punished in such terrible ways. Snow on my head. Seat cold and unresponsive. Heating system slow and smelling musty and forgotten.
And then, as I watched the snow falling, I began to think about how a year ago, my car didn't have a sunroof at all. I thought of how awesome it had been in spring, driving through town with the sunroof open when it was snowing, because it made me laugh when giant flakes of snow fell inside my car like a snow globe at all the stop signs and red lights. I thought about how seat warmers were new to me too, how I'd survived over 25 winters without seat warmers and hadn't even noticed the lack of them before getting a car that had them.
I thought about how dependent I was on windshield wipers and defrosters to do my dirty work so I could huddle in my car, relatively warm and in a terrible mood, boycotting having to clean off my own car.
I thought about how lucky I was to have a car at all.
Winter is coming. It's true and unavoidable. We're about to be plunged into months of darkness, coldness and despair, where every morning will begin by having to dig our car out of snow or ice before we can move on with our day. We'll have to shovel sidewalks and driveways, dig our parkas out of the closets. Our toes and fingers and noses will be cold. It'll probably get so cold it'll hurt to breathe.
But for a while there, watching it snow as my car struggled to warm up in the early morning hours, I thought about how lucky I was to have the things that I do, to live the life that I do. So many people in so many places around the world don't have the opportunities we do here, the things we take for granted. I was lucky that on that morning, the only thing I had to make me sulk was a sunroof and seat warmer that betrayed me.
So bring on winter. My grandparents survived it without seat warmers and so shall I.
