Winter in Nashville

Every week or so we get an inch of snow, not even enough to cover the scraggly blades of grass in our backyard. And every week the sun breaks through with deep blue skies that stretch from horizon to horizon, and the snow is gone in a day, in hours, in minutes. I apologize to my Northern friends; while nothing is growing here we still get those whiffs of soft dirt and warmed air that sing spring. I'm sorry our January feels like February, and our February skips to late March and flowers and rainstorms. It's not fair.

Growing up in New England, I always recognized the first robin of spring as a harbinger of budding trees and thin jackets. In Pittsburgh giant swarms of robins filled the parks after the last snow, pulling worms from the dirt and leaving the tunnels open to the sky. But now the robin is a winter bird; flocks fifty to one hundred deep line the telephone wires and fill trees with rustles and chirps. Snowy mornings are pandemonium: birds careen from yard to yard, looking for exposed dirt and fighting over the last of the fall's forgotten fruits. The robins are not alone; they are joined by mockingbirds and clumps of greasy-looking starlings, and occasional strikes by ravens or small hawks. One snowy morning I looked up in surprise to see three seagulls winging westward, their long thin wings and throaty call unmistakable, even 700 miles inland.

It's true that you never want what you have. This mild winter makes me long for the feet of snow burying my mother's house and envious of the my friends' slow, slushy bus rides to work. I miss the kind of winter where you feel like you are surviving. Where a walk to the state store for a bottle of wine becomes an exercise in character-building. Where you hole up at your buddy's house, under blankets and wool hats, bullshitting all night because it's too cold to walk home. Those kind of winters thicken your backbone and make the spring that much more of a miracle.

Friends, do not lament your cold and adverse winters. Do not envy me. For six months from now, when you are wearing light shirts and walking by a river, I will be driven indoors by endless blazing sun, soaked with sweat, and wracked with migraines from humidity so thick you can cut it with a knife.