Winter Whiners

It has been snowing for days here in Chicago. There has been a lull today -- but that was just because the temperature dropped into the negative double-digits, obliterating moisture at the molecular level. This happens every year. And every year, we Chicagoans start to whine. "Why do we live here?" "This town isn't fit for human habitation." But, of course, it is, and we do. The perpetually cheery kids who want "a moment of your time" to save the environment/children/whales are still standing at every corner in the Loop. The homeless guys are still out in force, asking for change, somehow less bundled-up than they are in the summer. And the Urban Professionals like me scurry from their warm lofts to trains/busses/cabs to the office and then back again, bitching about the weather to whomever will listen.

And we all listen, because we're from Chicago, it's winter time, and we're bound together in our annual ritual of suffering. Chicago folks know how wind off the lake can cut through four layers of clothing. We know how shoes and pant legs from the knees down become a dull, uniform gray from the salt. We know how frozen nostril hair crunches as we breathe. And we know that the skin in that unprotected oval between the bottoms of our hats and the tops of our scarves can bypass the sensation of "cold" entirely and go straight to "pain." Most of us have a story about having to eat snow off the roofs of our cars while stuck in an icy five-hour traffic jam. We tell these stories to our friends-in-warmer-climates. It makes us feel tough by comparison, and it makes them feel smart by comparison. Everybody wins.

I do think Chicago blossoms in the summer precisely because it suffers through the winter. The warm weather is a catharsis. It is not taken for granted. But I like winter in itself too, though I don't say that where my wife will hear. Few scenes are as hauntingly lovely as moonlight reflected on new snow, the hush in the air as it falls in big, fluffy flakes. The gray, dirty city turns clean and white, if only until morning. Remy likes it too: after a snowfall, he charges through snow banks, pokes his nose under the drifts, and chases after snowballs that vanish on impact. After the snow falls, the landscape is new, bright, and begging to be explored.