"Its' chilly this morning", she said while scrunched upright in a fetal like position on the chair, arms folded to conserve the body heat as though the chill of the 70 degree morning was somehow that of New England and it's negative numbers this time of year. Oh how spoiled my mother is with her tee shirt and thin cotton Capri pants she wore as sleep wear, no blanket but a thin sheet throughout the night. While reaching to her cup of morning gruel before work I look over at her and laugh with disbelief that she would, could even think such a thing. I immediately mention her spoiled comment and how naive it sounded as though she had never experienced most of her life living in New England, never moving beneath the Mason Dixon line. She and I laugh at the reality that today, in the islands the temperature will reach at least 80 degrees and throughout the pass six months here, have not seen an evening going below 70.
I then fell into a dreamlike gaze with the realization that I have never actually worn pants since I have been here, other than one time due to my collection of shorts needing washing and never anything more than a light cotton tee shirt which most days ends up shed sometime before noon. Thinking of Hull beach and the sand there, the 80 degree water and the kayaking adventure I will enjoy this morning as I do every morning in the Caribbean.
Quickly I snap out of my indigo glow of smiles and happy thoughts to my mind accepting the same time a year ago as, regressing back to New Hampshire and the cold steam from my breath in the morning as I would breath, scurrying around to make coffee and layering up for the day. Just stepping outside to start the truck, nose hairs freezing almost immediately while turning the key as the starter cranks over slowly and then starts up with the high pitched sound of an engine cold, almost screaming while idling high and wishing for warmer days in the Caribbean island chains. Scraping the cold windshield inside and out with a credit card due to the loss of a true scraper, one of many from ice and misuse, I can imagine the land fill and a pile of beaten scrapers from their war on ice while winning many battles they most definitely would lose the war and finally give in so another new one could take its place only to also meet its doom, for it's foe outnumbers anything that would try and stand in its way from conquering the great white north of New England. To me, the cold itself is unforgiving to just about anything and everything and although many who experience it year after year would chastise my discontent for it, surely even they, at some time, wish for warmth at times.
Giving in to the desolating of a New England winter, right around February when all men would brace for the cold cast down like a giant black hole that would swallow up anyone within its path and in such a gruesome way, devour ones sanity leaving them traumatized and wishing for the thaw of spring. Almost unrelenting and without remorse it would finish off the hardest of men, men of steel, men of stories past about colder times and the battles they had once been made to endure. The stories handed down by generations told over and over again about the Nor' Easter of 79 that paralyzed the east coast starting with D.C., and working its way up the coast like a freight train, hell bent on plowing through the tracks of where land meet the ocean and combining with bitter weather from the great lakes only to meet up and embrace one another while plunging down upon the defenseless colonies of people below. These stories, hundreds of stories told over and over again by those who were privy to witness such events seen no where else in the world. While the highest howling winds on record and the lowest temperatures recorded loom over the territory under the spell of Mt. Washington and all the lives it has taken by those careless venturers, disrespectful of this mountain, all their experience, only to numb their intelligence and seal their doom. And then those others whose fate would also be decided by this mountain but not out of lack of respect but rather lack of luck, lost and consumed by it. Humble are the people within this land, for they know the cold always wins as it may retreat those New England natives know it will be back and with a vengeance ready to drop down its revenge and ravage those sparse cities and little townships.
There are those that swear by it and would never give it up, they would never be beaten and in the eyes of some people would call them insane to insist upon such harsh weather during this time of year. There are those that are immune to its power, conquer that feeling in late January, after the holiday smiles have worn down and the new year looms ahead, those that welcome that February, unyielding cold, tormenting weather and bitter darkness. They are the men of men these warriors, fit with the strength to endure as though the gene handed down year after year among families who would say, "never", vehemently when asked if they could leave it all behind and move on to somewhere, anywhere more forgiving. They would freeze and die before they would allow that cold, darkness of New England winters drive them away, like colonist centuries ago they will march out to meet the dreaded season, head on and fight it with their own vengeance and determination. Humble are these men, women, young and old, warriors of the winter season and fixed on the thaw ahead. There is money to be made while the plows pile up the snow in mounds along the sides of the street, those towns looking like mazes and the weary visitor finding themselves lost in the labyrinths of New England winters. Others, rigged and ready, their diesel trucks to plow out all those driveways blanketed by a storm the night before and then the children whose schools would be shut down gathering together in packs like wild wolves as they march door to door offering shoveled walkways, for a price, with their smiles as big as can be that the day will be spent trudging and sledding rather than tending to studies. The ponds covered over and plowed off so those willing to bear this cold would tighten there ice skate, grab their sticks and hockey gloves and play pickup games, usually with Sorel's used as goal markers. I remember the times, being a child of New England and all of the fun winter time sports. Not a care in the world was the cold as children are immune to this deadly warrior that plague so many. Every once in a while the children would win their own war, schools closed down and the prize for this triumph could be a number of things; skiing, skating, hockey, snow fights, snow men or just a day sledding on, "Killa Hill", the hill behind my house, turned into condo's years ago but before was the hill only the bravest would sled down. All the kids of the neighborhood would meet at the top after building jumps half way down and always a few of these warriors in tears with something broken but looked on days later as a purple heart of sorts for their valor and courage.
I must say I have been beaten, disgracefully I have succumb to the warmer days of winter and have become so spoiled that I think the days of old New England winters are ones of the past. I remember looking out the window, the frosted windows and trails of vapor seeming like miles from the tailpipes of cars following down the street. Although invigorating and inviting the first snow of the year only turns to dismay and desolation as we are confined to the one room with a fire place, watching television and bickering over who's turn it is to get a few more logs from the deck just outside the door. Merely getting out from under the warm fleece throw and walking that few yards to the door, stepping out onto the deck and grabbing the frozen logs was treated as though our worlds would be turned upside down. This is what happens to those who are defeated by the howling winds, the biting cold and the mounting snows. Battered and broken, some of us wounded by its monotony year after year, within the mind succumbing to the fact that my own mental health being at risk of decay from the desolation that I once felt, the isolation and furthermore my own will to introvert until rousted by something, anything. The horrors of my own mind became a variable, one that made a pact with those New England winters, that they would widdle me down and finish me off. But when April came, something happened, something rousted me from my long hibernation of sorts, this introverted being of almost 4 years was enlivened again by the thaw of Spring and found myself ready to escape before those dangerous winter days finally broke me down to my own ruin.
I can think and smile about it now, think of my friends, still back there, in that place, that cold and desolate winter of my youth. The remembrance of frozen hair sticking to my face as I awaited my ride to school early mornings and the cold gnawed it's way through layer after layer in search of that 98.6. It was a great war of the cold and me, years of observation and technique would strengthen me and build my front but I was always in defense as for me the cold was always the antagonist, the enemy. Like the utmost of evils and without discrimination its attack is quick and harsh, never yielding and feared like that of the worst enemy I can imagine. With this I find it only fitting to recall Robert Frost, with all his eloquence and style, not to mention a man who also found himself in the deep dark New England winters and the reflections they would permit for him, I quote a poem:
"Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what Ive tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
and would suffice."
Yes, there is something to be said of the cold in New England and respect it I do, forever, as It is as much a part of me as the memories burned into my thoughts, the stories to share with my children of those storms and times within the winter of my youth and the war with New England created mostly within my own mind.