Ohio weather – love it or leave it

Here we go. Winter in Ohio. Again. The calendar says the seasons each last three months. Winter officially began Dec. 21, but as I sat at my keyboard, it was technically still autumn, and we had already had the driveway plowed twice – in a matter of three days.

Even before the first snowfall, I had AAA come out to jump-start my car battery. The furnace has been running nonstop since I can’t remember when. And the laundry load of “darks” was nothing but sweats and socks. And we’re only just beginning. I’m not liking this very much.

I don’t like that it gets dark at 4:30 p.m. Oh, I know we are on the other side now and the daylight will last a wee bit longer each day until June. I haven’t noticed any significant difference yet. And I don’t expect to until maybe March, which is when, by the way, spring is scheduled to begin. We’ll see about that, she said with a touch of sarcasm.

I am officially in hermit mode, with a touch of cranky thrown in for good measure. Do you get the sense that winter is not my favorite season? I don’t think it’s always been that way. It must be another of those age-related maladies. There was a time.

Winter was never at the top of my list of favorite seasons, but it was bearable. It was my early teens, before I was driving and had to worry about snow tires, touchy car heaters and iced-up windshields. All I had to worry about was bundling up before stepping outside. That was back in the days when you zipped up your jacket while you were outside. We wore something on our heads, something that covered our ears – woolen headscarves for the girls and earflap hats for the boys. We wore boots in the snow, boots that we took off when we got to school and changed into regular shoes that we carried back and forth.

We played outside, building snow forts and having snowball fights. We were on our sleds – real sleds with metal runners and ropes to haul them back up the hill after an exhilarating ride, sometimes two or three piled on top of one another if we were short on sleds for some reason. If the lake was frozen over and the ice thick enough, we would clear the snow the best we could with shovels or brooms, depending on the depth and heaviness of the snow, lace up the old ice skates that hung in the garage the rest of the year, and get up a game of hockey or practice the moves we saw in the Ice Capades when they came to town.

One of my favorite winter memories was walking at night on the street in front of my house. There were no sidewalks and very little traffic. I hesitate to even use the term “traffic.” The only cars that went by were neighbors coming home after a long, slippery drive from work. The snow was already a couple inches deep and more was gently falling, dancing in the glow of the streetlight, crunching underfoot. It almost made you want to sing “Silent Night.” In fact, if such a night occurred during Christmas week, we would hear carols coming from the buttoned-up-for-the-winter Chippewa Lake Park loudspeakers.

There were a few years when carolers from local churches would join forces and stroll the village singing Christmas songs, often taking their choirs to local nursing homes to visit patients.

I’m not in a neighborhood like that anymore, so I don’t see kids sledding or building forts. Maybe some are, but I have a sneaking suspicion most are holed up in bedrooms or basements, glued to their games. What kind of memories are they building?

I’ve got my memories to keep me warm, and that’s good enough for now.