“All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray.” So begins one of my all-time favorite songs. I love it for its harmonies and the way it brings back that long ago time when I was young and the Mamas and the Papas were all over the radio, not because I love the time of year when the leaves are brown and the sky is gray.

As I write this, the leaves still have a little bit of color, but the sky is so gray it’s raining. Rain in late October; is there anything colder than that? Of course there is – sleet in early February! I love the idea of four seasons, and I wouldn’t want to live in Florida, but boy, is it inconvenient. Just imagine describing snow to someone from outer space. “Okay, so, for at LEAST four months of the year, this white stuff falls from the SKY, and it’s FROZEN, and it can PILE up and PILE up until you can barely get out the DOOR, but you have go out and SHOVEL it off the sidewalk and driveway, and when it turns to ICE you have to chip away at it and then shovel  THAT, and then you have to get into your ice-cold CAR and drive to WORK and walk shivering to the front door, and chances are it will snow AGAIN while you’re at work and then you’ll have to chisel off your CAR and try to get home through the snowy, icy STREETS.”

Oh, and of course once you get home, if it’s that really wet, heavy snow that just about dislocates your shoulders shoveling it, you can also construct snowmen and forts and really great snowballs to pelt your favorite passersby with. Forgive me if I forgot the fun part.

I believe I have written before about my aversion to winter sports. (Not that I’m a big practitioner of any summer sports. My favorite outdoor sport is reading under a tree. Or picnicking. That’s a good one. I can pack a mean picnic basket.) Take skiing (please). I don’t like heights. I don’t like slipping and sliding on icy surfaces. I don’t like the cold. So, I’ll see you back at the lodge, sipping hot chocolate.

When I was young, winters were better. This isn’t because the snow was less plentiful, but because I was a child and my father did all the work and I felt all protected and safe. One of my favorite memories is of half-waking on a school morning, hearing him scraping the sidewalk and the double driveway long before the sun came up. Then I would arise to hot cereal and toast, and my mother would help me get into my coat and snow pants. This was back when girls had to wear dresses to school. On days that didn’t quite warrant the snow pants, I remember wearing knee socks that still left my knees painfully red and cold.

I was on the school safety patrol when I was in sixth grade, and one of my favorite winter tasks was helping the kindergarteners get out of their snow gear. We had little red brooms that we wielded to literally brush the kids off. Being young and clueless, they had no doubt made snow angels and jumped into drifts all the way to school. I had outgrown that kind of joy by then, and just trudged like some Russian peasant through the Northwest Davenport Gulag from the warmth of home to the warmth of school.

The thing is, it was really warm at home. My parents, though frugal in every other way, kept the thermostat at 72 balmy degrees throughout the winter months. I wish I could ask them today about that. (Note: It’s funny, the things you wish you could ask your parents once they’re gone. If you still have your parents, ask them everything now.) All I can think is that 1) 72 degrees is what we all think of as room temperature, and 2) having a really warm home may have been the point of their otherwise frugal ways. “No, you can’t have another Barbie, but you can be toasty warm.”  They never put it that way, but I wish I’d been more grateful. I actually remember being annoyed that my nose would sweat when I was putting my makeup on in high school. Silly me.

Now, my husband and I try to be green and keep the thermostat fashionably cool. I wear so many layers I feel like one of those kindergarteners. Right now I’m sitting at a drafty window that’s getting replaced next week, and I’ve got a down comforter on my lap. When I went to the living room to get it, I found the cat curled up right in front of the heat register, ready to absorb whatever warmth would come out of it, if and when the furnace is allowed to kick in.

But I’m COLD! I’m really COLD! And I hate it! When I’m cold I have trouble moving, which I realize just adds to my paralysis. I love the Calvin and Hobbes comic in which he complains of being cold, and his dad locks him out of the house. When his mom lets him in, his dad calmly says, “Does the house feel warmer now?” I know if I would go take a walk around the block, I’d stir up my blood and appreciate the amazing difference in temperature between the outside and the inside, even in my frigid house.

But my fingers are cold. I think I’ve got Raynaud’s Disease, this awful condition where your extremities are so sensitive to the cold, they tend to turn blue or white and fall off (okay, that’s an exaggeration) very easily. I tried typing with gloves on, the kind with no fingers, and it just felt weird. (The fact that these were wedding gloves with seed pearls that I got at the Discovery Shop could have something to do with that. I felt I had to write formal poetry.) It’s a real dilemma for a writer, don’t you think?

So I’ll keep looking for creative ways to keep warm. Maybe rub some Ben Gay on my back. (Too stinky.) Maybe wear a jaunty cap indoors. (Instant hat head.) Maybe take a hot bath. (But then you have to get out.) Maybe just keep complaining. After all, that’s what “California Dreaming” is all about, and look how well it turned out – one big, gorgeous complaint. It warms the heart, anyway.

Pam Kress-Dunn
pam2617@yahoo.com