I don't dream about a White Christmas...

I don’t like snow.

It wasn’t always like that, but after having spent most of my winters in sunny Southern California, moving to a snowy clime was a rather radical change for me.

I was 19 when I moved to the greater Boston area and I arrived on a sultry, stormy summer’s day…between the humidity and the no-see-ums, a particularly odious species of nearly microscopic biting fly...I was not terribly impressed. But soon the weather cooled and I was faced with one of the most spectacular autumn landscapes I had ever seen in my life. I was enthralled, I was enchanted…I was impressed!

Unfortunately, the weather just couldn’t quit while it was ahead and those snappy, crisp autumn days segued into a bitter winter chill that settled into my bones and simply would not leave. No amount of layering, no wrapping in blankets, no degree of heat from the furnace could give me comfort, I simply huddled and shivered and prayed for deliverance. Paradoxically I was, at the same time, looking forward to my first white Christmas. It didn’t snow in San Diego…you had to go up to the Laguna Mountains for that…and our rare Christmas trips to Oregon hadn’t netted any snow that I could recall.

And so, at 19, while cursing the cold that left my fingers fumbly and my feet numb, I would still peer out the window every morning hoping to see that pristine blanket of snow heralding the beginning of the holiday season. And every morning I would find myself greeted by the depressingly brown landscape of dead lawns, barren flowerbeds, and naked trees. It was disheartening.

We lived in a government housing project out on a little spit of land that was surrounded by water. It was nearly an island, with nothing but a narrow two-lane causeway connecting us to the mainland. It was too cold to go for a walk or a bike ride or take the children out, there were no shops, no activities, not even a bus to take me to town. There was nothing to do all day except watch TV, clean the already immaculate little apartment, and occasionally glance out the window and past the dull brown landscape to the flat grey water of our little inlet.

Thanksgiving came and went, and we spent it with my in-laws, New Englanders to the core. On days when the sun was out and the winds did not whip frostily across the water, I would try to take the kids out for a little walk to the playground, the baby snuggled into his bunting and tucked securely into his carriage, my daughter toddling precariously in her rose-coloured hand-me-down snowsuit, looking for all the world like a miniature pink Michelin Man.

Christmas morning finally came and I was in a frenzy. We had a command performance with my formidable mother-in-law at noon, and she was a stickler for punctuality. With two kids to get ready, and needing to carve out enough time for myself so that she could not have anything to further sharpen her tongue on, I barely glanced in the mirror, let alone out the window. Our presents were already bagged and ready to carry with us to Braintree, but while my husband slept in, I had two little ones to bathe and dress and then myself to prepare. It wasn’t my daughter started squealing that I went out to the front door, looked through the storm door, and was greeted with a pristine panorama of white that blanketed the neighbourhood up to the tops of the car tyres. It was fabulous! Christmas morning and a fresh snowfall…I was entranced.

Eagerly I grabbed my boots and coat and reached for the storm door handle, only to find the door frozen shut! Apparently the blowing wind had stacked snow up against my front door and blown it into the cracks around the door and then it all froze solid. I was not amused…how was I going to get out there and make a snowman—my first—if I couldn’t get the blasted door open? Weighing my options, I finally decided to wake my husband up. He was going to have to get the door open sooner or later if we were going to make it to his mother’s house by noon, so now was as good a time as any.

He was not amused. While I was focussed on getting the door open so I could play in the snow, he immediately assessed the situation as being more dour than I had realized.

“Plow hasn’t been by,” he grunted in typically truncated New England fashion. “Gonna have a helluva time getting the car out before the plow comes.”

I nodded, not immediately realizing the ramifications of what he was saying…I just wanted him to get the damned door open so I could go out and play! An unspoiled mantle of snow stretched from the front door out to the car, the ugly desiccated lawn covered over with glittery white, and the naked trees now had an ethereal coating of ice on their branches. The dry barren earth of yesterday had been transformed into a breathtaking fairyland and I wanted access to it!

Finally, he got the door open and with a whoop of joy I rushed out onto the front stoop, a cement pad with three steps leading down to the sidewalk. The snow had developed a hard crust in the cold morning hours and so I was able to run on top of it for a few yards before one foot punched through the shell and I plummeted…with just one leg, mind you…down into the soft wet snow beneath. I was stuck.

My husband, knowing what was ahead of him, had gone back into the house to get dressed. I hollered and flailed about for a bit, eventually extricating myself from the hole I had made, but now sweaty inside my woollies. And I had snow inside my boots…or I should say, ice water. I carefully picked my way back to the house, only to be met with an exceedingly unhappy husband, dressed and wrapped like a mummy, who muttered the single word “Coffee” as he snatched the snow shovel from the front closet and headed outside.

He had a fearsome temper, so I put the coffee on before I stripped off my wet clothes. The water in my boots and my feet had equalized their temperatures by now, so I was stumbling around the house on numb stumps, and my hair was wet from sweat and exertion. I stripped down and put on my bathrobe and went to the window to watch my husband shovel a path from the front door to the curb, where the car was parked, our apartment having no garages or carports.

Suddenly, I realized what had my husband in such a bad mood…the road was invisible under the blanket of snow and the car was locked tightly into its place next to the curb. Not only was he going to have to dig a path to the car, and dig the car out, he was going to have to put tyre chains on the thing or we’d never get out of the projects and across that narrow causeway…it was Christmas day and we lived out in a low-income enclave…we weren’t likely to see a snow plough any time soon.

His father and uncle worked for the DPW—Department of Public Works—and a surreptitiously placed phone call worked wonders. As my husband, fuelled by caffeine and bile, dislodged and moved tons of snow, his uncle dispatched a snow plough to our neighbourhood. And, in a real life cliché, as the last few shovelfuls of snow freed the car from its icy imprisonment, the snow plough came around the bend and scraped the roadway clean, depositing the gathered snow in a sinuous, freezing hillock parallel to its path…and burying every car parked at the curb, including the one my husband had just dug out. I made another pot of coffee and hurried to make a hot breakfast, knowing he was going to have to start all over again.

His mother was not happy that we were going to be late. “You’ve known for weeks what time you had to be here!” she barked into the phone. “Why must everything always be last minute with you?” Who knew that my order for a white Christmas was going to be filled with such thoroughness and alacrity?

Before long my husband came back into the house, his face set in a grim line. “Is the car dug out?” I asked with false cheer, shushing the toddler and jiggling the fussy baby. “Shall I get the kids ready to go?”

He grunted and grabbed the coffee pot. “Undercarriage is frozen to the street,” he muttered, wrapping his reddened hands around the hot mug. It seems that the wind from our grey little bay had blown snow under the car and, when the temperatures dropped in the early morning, it had formed a crust of ice like the one I had broken through, only this crust of ice was a solid chunk linking the undercarriage of the car to the pavement below. He went next door to borrow tools and resumed his dismal, freezing endeavours.

Time passed and, with the exception of regular trips to the house for coffee, it was hours before he came in to say the car was finally freed. I was afraid to tell him how many times his mother had called, haranguing us…well, ME, in particular…for our lack of foresight and planning and giving me a blow-by-blow account of the ruination of her Christmas dinner.

As I dressed the kids, he went out to warm up the car, only to return minutes later, red-faced with frustration and suppressed rage. The door locks were frozen and he couldn’t’ get the car door open.

When he resolved that, the battery was low and couldn’t turn over the engine. A neighbour helped with that.

The windscreen wipers were frozen…not the blades frozen to the glass, mind you, but the joints where they pivoted, so we had no wipers.

Eventually, two hours late, we set off for his mother’s house where we were greeted with a furious mother-in-law and starving guests who had to wait even longer while my husband showered and cleaned up after his Herculean labours of the morning. His mother, so angry at our tardiness, focussed her fury on me and, when he finally presented himself, turned on him. His pent-up frustration over the morning’s events erupted and a fight of magnificent proportions ensued, culminating in my being commanded to pack up the kids and get into the car, we were going home.

Calmer heads eventually prevailed, but the day had been spoilt. The baby slept, my daughter…not yet two…was cross and wary, petulant and fussy, unlike her normal sunny self. Eventually the day ground to a close and, with a mountain of gifts for the children piled in the car, we wound our way through the slippery streets to home, only to find…

Someone had parked in the space my husband had worked for hours to clear, the parking space that had been ours every night for the three months we had lived in our little flat. Now, with a car full of presents and two sleepy children, we couldn’t park the car. As I juggled sleeping babies and trod ever-so-carefully on the now-icy walk, he went from door to door, banging noisily and rudely demanding to know whose car was parked in his hard-won space. I got the kids into the house and into their beds and skidded my way back to the car…standing in the middle of the road with the driver’s door open and the engine running...to unpack it. Several trips…and not a few pratfalls on the icy walk…later, I had fetched the contents of the car into the house, but he was still making his rounds, spreading his own particular brand of Christmas cheer to the neighbours.

As I changed the sleeping baby, I heard the car door slam and the engine rev. I tucked the little one into his crib and began undressing my limp little girl, expecting my husband to walk through the door any minute, the parking problem resolved. It didn’t happen.

Hours later I stood alone on the icy front step looking across the shimmering road…and our now-empty parking space…to the moonlight playing on the dark waters of the bay and wondered how something so pure and magical as the season’s first snowfall could initiate a day so full of acrimony and ill-will. It was now after 10, the children soundly sleeping and I was alone on this, my first white Christmas. My husband was, I knew by this time, drowning his sorrows at one of the local taverns, oblivious to the pile of unopened gifts scattered beneath the tree…he had wanted to get home before full dark and so we had not opened them at his mother’s house…and to the slumbering babies, and to his wife who was standing shivering on an icy stoop, gazing at the new moon and asking herself just what was so wonderful about a white Christmas, after all.

I hate snow.

Whiling away the weekend...

Yellow star: my house. Green star: the vlei

Racing season is upon us. In the stillness of a late winter afternoon I can hear the distant drone of the straining engines as they circle the track. It's one of the signs...Spring will soon be here.

But the weather station is predicting rain in two days time, confirming the message my back and hip have been giving me for two days. The vleis are carpeted with wild calla lilies and the Namaqualand is blooming despite winter’s grip having only loosened. More storms brood in the wings, awaiting their cue to lash us with yet more wind, rain, and frigid temperatures.

Soon we will be out in The Baby, her top down, cruising alongside the coastal waterways, admiring the views and basking in the South African sun. But for now we huddle in the warmth of our bed, coddled with quilts and duvets, and nap away a Saturday afternoon to the lulling buzz of the distant races.

Soon it will be spring.

Photo from http://www.geocities.com/russell_sheldon/tobaccowars/T_001_Killarney.jpg

Winter wet and windy

It’s the Fourth of July. Today, all over America, people are preparing picnics and cookouts, planning trips to the park or the beach, and looking forward to firework displays. Tomorrow they will b nursing sunburns and hangovers, traditional legacies of America’s celebration of her independence from Britain more than 200 years past.

It is almost 10 in the morning here in Cape Town and it is the dead of winter. The rain alternates between downpour and deluge and, with no central heating, the doggies and I are tucked up in the bed with the mattress pad heater beneath us and a duvet topped by a boutis quilt, weighty and warm, on top of us.

The light is dim, more like immediate post-dawn than approaching noon, and the best news is the infamous Cape Doctor…that stiff and bracing wind so characteristic of these parts…has not decided to pay us a visit concurrent with the monsoon. I’ve never been fond of extreme weather, and one form or another at any given time is all my nerve will take with equanimity. I especially dislike heavy winds and coupling them with a torrential rain is my particular idea of hell.

But, ever the seeker of the silver lining, I will say this for today’s dim and soggy state: the wind is tolerable, there is no thunder, no lightning, and if I go outside for a bit of a stroll, I won’t get sunburned, only damp…and between the clothes dryer and a cupboard full of fat, fluffy towels, that is quickly and easily remedied…and without lasting ill effect.

But the doggies seem to have the right of it, tucked up warmly in the bed, snoozing the foul weather away. Perhaps I should join them…

Winter mornings

A few years back, when Nash was our only dog, we fretted what to do for him on rainy days when we were out. We were living in the cottage when had only a narrow strip of pavement for a back garden, and no shelter whatsoever. We settled on a little doghouse made of a resin-like plastic, reasoning that while it wasn’t the Ritz (as Nash seemed to view the inside of the cottage), it was a roof over his shaggy little head and shelter from the brisk wind.

Nash, of course, disagreed, He determinedly refused to consider the structure, preferring to stand pathetically at the back door, dripping wet, those big brown eyes silently pleading for us to let his shivering little dog body into the warmth of the house. It worked every time and the doghouse because one of this bits of flotsam that we all accumulate until we eventually gave it away and it became the white elephant of another person who had a similar back garden…and a similarly inclined dog.

We moved to this house three years ago and put a bed on the tiled, covered, lighted patio for Nash. Now, you must understand, Nash (and all additional doggies) sleep inside the house at night during cool weather, but when we go out, we feel obliged to provide a comfortable, sheltered place for him to rest until we get home. He took to that little basket and pad and made it his own until Candy joined the family and promptly chewed it to bits.

Subsequently, a couple of old carpets served as an insulation against the cold ceramic tile floor and the dogs seemed happy enough with their indoor and outdoor beds until Trinny came along. The other dogs, being Maltese, are fluffy little creatures that need monthly grooming and haircuts. Top their natural fuzz with a fleecy little jersey, and they stay warm and happy on all but the coldest days. Trinny, on the other hand, is a long-legged fox terrier with a coarse, close coat and no winter undergrowth. When the weather turns mild, Trinny quakes like an aspen and clatters those big teeth of hers resoundingly. A jersey helped, but didn’t solve the problem, so we looked into the matter of a new dog bed.

We scouted around and settled on a large hard-plastic bed that was vented at the bottom and had a rim around the base to keep the bed up off the ground. This would prevent cold from so easily leaking through the base of the bed and, if wind blew rain onto the patio floor, would keep the bed dry. With an assortment of old blankets, pillows and mats, along with each other for body heat, we expected them to make a little dogpile for warmth and live happily ever after.

Have you ever considered how amazing it is that these little creatures whom we presume to be so much less intelligent than we are, stymie us at every possible turn? The bed was plenty big for Trinny and the Maltese Mafia, but they didn’t see it that way. Night after night either Hubby or I would have to go out onto the patio and scold the growling little white thugs into letting Trinny into it. And heaven forfend she should have to get up in the night and make her way out to the doggie loo…Nash and Candy would rearrange themselves to take up all the space in the bed and warn off poor Trinny when she got back from answering nature’s call and she, not a stupid old girl, would begin a rather ritualized bark that would not only awaken us from a sound sleep and notify us of her predicament and her need for our intervention. The big doggie bed, as a means of canine social engineering and shared warmth, was a bust.

Winter is fast approaching and not only are the nights cold, the days are beginning to have a decided nip to them. Trinny comes to the kitchen door, clattering her teeth and trembling pathetically in an attempt to gain admittance to the doggie bed in the cubby in our bathroom, but we want the dogs outside during the day. So, yesterday, we made another trip to the pet store, looking for an “igloo” style dog house that might do a better job of retaining doggie body heat during the colder days and evenings. Nash, we knew, would probably turn up his little nose at such a structure, since he had adamantly refused to use the original dog house, but maybe Trinny would find a measure of comfort there.

But there were no igloos that would suit our purposes and disheartened, we started to leave. Out of the corner of my eye, however, high up on an overhead shelf, I spotted some objects that looked rather like denim cocoons. Shaped rather like WWII Quonset huts made of channel-stitched and fluff-filled denim, they had a circular doorway and a padded floor and looked to be just about the size of the travel kennel that our groomer uses to transport the furbabies. It took only a quick examination to determine that these might just be the answer.

Sure enough, Trinny took to it like a duck to water. After I tossed in a smelly little rug from the old doggie bed and a treat, she clambered in, dragging her long legs behind her, and curled up for a snooze. When she pokes her head out to see what’s going on she looks rather like a turtle with a blue denim shell, but she’s obviously quite pleased with her cocoon and, most importantly, isn’t shivering every time I see her.

The Maltese Mafia, however, are rather a different kettle of fish. Candy dislikes the thing intensely and, rather than crawl inside to escape the chill, climbs on top of the thing, collapsing it into a close facsimile of a regular soft-sided dog bed. Nash is not so reluctant to climb in and take a snooze, but he’s not exactly thrilled when Candy climbs on top while he is inside and collapses the whole thing on top of him.

The chill of early morning, however, has a way of overcoming even the strongest resistance. We let the babies outside at about 6 in the morning to do their doggie business, after which they usually hop into the big doggie bed together for another snooze. But now the mornings have a deep chill to them and the open bed has been stored until the warm mornings of summer return. And today, despite her reluctance, the morning cold drove Candy into one of the cocoons to snuggle up with Nash, and this was the scene on the patio as hubby left for work this morning: