I am writing this in my living room, on my laptop which sits like an island amidst a sea of tiny Lego bricks and assorted Ninja Turtle weaponry. I can see out to my front yard and beyond from here. I can see the frost gray asphalt of the residential street, the neighbour vacuuming out his car, my dull green front lawn. In a few minutes, my son and I are going to go for a bike ride so he can perfect his mad wheelie skillz before spring.
Did I mention the condition of the lawn?
The LAWN.
The neighbour vacuuming out his car? Riding BIKES? THE LAWN?
It’s February, and I live in Canada. As in, The Great White North, home of the 2010 Winter Olympics, the place where Santa Claus and polar bears live? The only thing I should see this time of year when I look outside are half frozen children stuck to metal fence posts, and irate fur trimmed parka clad citizens giving plow drivers the finger after he barricades their driveways behind a five foot wall of packing snow.
I don’t want to see my lawn in February. The snow offers a four month reprieve from the leaves I didn’t rake in the fall. What I want to see are blue flashing salt truck lights, delighted children seeing their schools on the “closed” list, and frantic blizzard forecasting weathermen wiping the sweat of fear from their foreheads. We should be on our third container of cocoa and been through two pairs of snow pants each by now. Instead, last week we sat in the hot tub eating BBQ chicken and watermelon, and the toboggans the kids got for Christmas still have the ribbon and bows on them. I haven’t ONE SINGLE TIME had to scrape ice off my windshield with a metal BBQ spatula. PM bought me a snow blower and I haven’t even touched it. I may use it to cut the grass in the summer.
I want snow. The weather channel is calling for our area to get 5-10 cm tomorrow, but I’m not holding my breath. I want 5 feet! Five cm? Too little, too late, weather man. How can I appreciate the spring and summer when I have no winter horror stories to complain about? So much of our identity comes from the fact that we are a winter country. Quite frankly, I’m feeling very on edge and I fear for my constitution should we get no snow this winter. I feel like up is down, black is white, everything is something it wasn’t before. Between the freaky winter weather and my boyfriend Conan getting his show cancelled are making me feel really vulnerable right now.
The season started off by looking promising. We had snow and cold temperatures by December, but nothing since. Apparently there is snow all around us, and the kids come home with red cheeks and helmet hair after weekends snowmobiling at their dad’s cottage 3 hours north of here. So what up, Mother Nature? Was it the fact that I was actually prepared for you this year? It’s been pretty cold some days, with several stints of -40 wind chills, but with no snow outside the winter feels so fake; so hopeless. It’s as depressing as getting a Boston Cream donut from Tim Horton’s with no velvety cream inside.
I have friends in the Washington D.C. area who have been bombarded with snow this year. They’re frantically stocking their cupboards, topping up their gas tanks, and swapping tips in case of power outages. They’re being driven crazy by snow bound children kept home from school. They’re breaking their backs shoveling pathways to the mailbox. They’re rubbing frozen toes and shivering under multiple layers of down and felted wool.
They’re so lucky it makes me sick.












