The more I think about it, the more I feel sure there is something childish and innocent about wanting the four seasons to unfurl in proper, stately order. It's a fairytale kind of year that has such distinctive seasons. Nothing like the Pacific Northwest, really, no matter how brightly I gloss memory. I've always been a sentimental fool. I cherish the notion of a world where snow lies deep on the fields in winter, spring comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb, and the corn grows as high as an elephant's eye during the long golden days of summer. Ah, to live in a Rogers and Hammerstein musical.
Maybe this fascination with the weather as ambience is part of my family dynamics. I'm not sure. We all talk about the weather quite a lot, only partly because it's a nice, safe topic. It actually interests us, I think. For one thing, if you're going to hove off skiing for the weekend, you want to know what kind of snow you're dealing with. For another, people who travel as much as my family does, individually and together, need to know what to pack for. But even beyond that, I think there's something in us that responds to the climate and alters our moods accordingly.
For myself, I know there are emotional associations with certain kinds of weather conditions. It's not dissimilar to a response to music. You know how hearing a certain song after years and years just flings you back into a state or mind or a memory that you haven't experienced in ages? Certain days do that to me, too. Yesterday, the beautiful and mild spring day, was uncomfortably like -- oh, it's hard to explain. It's like all those spring days when I was 10 or 11, and I had to stay in and study fractions when I wanted to be playing, or I wanted to stay in reading and got chucked out of the house with the injunction to go play. The weather was stirring up those memories, vague and inchoate as they were, and I didn't much like it.
So today, which is sunny and colder (and the groundhog ought to have seen his shadow, speaking of childish and innocent beliefs), is a much nicer day for me. I'm not so unsettled. I read in the paper that rain is expected tomorrow. I can slip back inside my adult brain, safe from the incursions of uncomfortable ghosts.
May you always have the weather you wish for.