Sunday, March 19, 2006
The cold was bitter, but the memory sweet
Elizabeth Strother
Recent columns
- For those who have too little
- Time to gather mountain views
- Our blind spot on roads
- Following the money trail
From the RoundTable blog
It's Wednesday, and the winter's final (surely?) blast of bitter temperatures -- OK, semibitter temperatures -- is whipping into the New River Valley, the casual, back-handed slap nature doles out to those of us bold enough ever to hope for an early spring.
The wind threatens to knock me down every time I step out the door.
I should be warming myself with fantasies of Caribbean beaches, but instead I am recalling being similarly wind-whipped and much colder on a trip last winter to New York City that, it turned out, was closer than I thought it'd be to home.
Perhaps you, like I, have wondered what, exactly, is meant by "a woman of a certain age." My definition: Having a girl child whom you have known since she was 3 trotting you around the big city, warning you that you're not holding on tightly enough to your pocketbook and to look all ways when you cross the street.
She, a registered nurse now, was taking me to Bloomingdale's for one of those makeup makeovers, a little spruce-up for my birthday. I sat and allowed myself to be fussed over by her and an equally young sales clerk, an artist in eye shadows, and the pair of them just beamed down at me, so pleased were they with their work.
I had not seen such approving faces for some years since a dentist, not my regular guy, told me to bite down and adjudged that I was blessed with a perfect bite. No orthodontist could give me that, he assured me, it was a gift of God, and he and the dental assistant looked so gratified they fairly glowed. I basked.
Needless to say, I was happy when I left Bloomingdale's, and I and my hostess walked and rode the subway all over Manhattan that weekend, and we had a wonderful time. But I was cold.
Temperatures were in the 20s or 30s during the day, quite bearable really -- except when the wind blew. And that was all the time. Oh, the gusts were punctuated by brief periods of stillness, but these merely taunted and teased, daring pedestrians to uncurl their huddled bodies and catch the full force of the next wind.
I shivered in my overcoat, wrapped my arms around myself and pulled my head, turtle like, down into my turned-up collar. At least, I imagine that's what I did. It's what I normally do when I'm cold.
I wasn't really aware of any of that, though, when I arrived back at my friend's apartment building and the friendly doorman -- yeah, she has a doorman -- started giving me a hard time.
"What are you shivering for, acting like you're cold?"
I am cold, I told him. It's cold outside.
"But you're in a big, long overcoat, nice and warm."
Well, it was a quite old overcoat, really, and not all that warm anymore; the wool was worn and the lining, many times repaired, was again in shreds. I wore it year after year because I liked it. My young friend, who probably was 10 when I bought it, had looked at the houndstooth pattern and noted sardonically that it was true, then, that if you held onto anything long enough, it would come back into style.
I couldn't tell the doorman all that. But he seemed truly to be waiting for some explanation of behavior that almost implied, well, self-pity. And that, apparently, is bad form in New York, where the hassles of everyday life are so many, I suppose, that if people started whining it would never end. So I gave him an excuse I thought he'd understand.
Well, I'm from Virginia.
"Oh! Then you're not used to the cold."
And I got a pass. All weekend I could come in shivering and get the sympathetic smile. I was from Virginia, Virginia's the South, and the South is hot.
This story worked well for me until it was time to go to the airport, and I flagged down a cab.
The driver looked Middle Eastern, an immigrant, no doubt. I didn't expect him to speak much English, but I was surprised.
He spoke it fluently, though with an accent. And he was warm and chatty. Almost inevitably, a conversation between strangers will turn to the weather, and I made note of the cold. I'm from Virginia, and ....
"Virginia!" he said excitedly. Yes, he knew about Virginia. He used to live in Virginia, when he first came to America. The winters were cold.
Where'd you live? I asked.
"Blacksburg."
Well shut my mouth.
The winters are still cold, some days, at least.
But Monday is the first day of spring. Oh happy day.
