Winter comes to the South

“I wonder why someone has lined rocks up along the edge of the bay?” I thought when I saw the white line along the low water line. On closer inspection I realized it was ice forming a break line on the shore.

Every conversation and local radio broadcast from the past few days has begun with a discussion of the cold weather. Our landlord called to ask us to wrap the hose spigots in towels and plastic bags. The kids didn’t go outside for recess all week. The stores have had a run on hats and gloves.

Having spent the first 20 some years of my life north of the Mason-Dixon line, I want to scoff at all these soft southerners who are getting so worked up about temps in the teens and twenties. During the day the highs are in the 40s, so the freeze isn’t even sustained through the day. This is nothing, I want to say. As a teenager in the Midwest, I would go out for runs and come home with my nostrils frozen and my scarf stiff and crunchy with frozen condensation. When we lived north of Chicago, I kept an extra supply of hats, gloves and scarves, a blanket, and a foldaway snow shovel in the back of the car just in case we got caught somewhere. I regularly wore two pairs of socks. We kept a basket of boots by the back door, so the kids could go out and skate on the puddle that froze over the low spot in the back yard.

I want to tease these Southerners who have wrapped their palm trees and tropical plants in sheets and tarps and Saranwrap. But gosh darnit, I’m too cold.