After my second head-cold, I
decided to blame winter on all my ills, bad moods, inability to sleep at night
and everything else I could toss on the heap. In the grip of frigid and windy
nastiness, it was easy enough to do. I got out the makeshift desk I use when I
want to work in the living room, and huddled there with my heavy down-filled
blanket wrapped around me. Right in front of the pellet stove. And still froze
my knuckles off. I hibernated even more than I usually do, refusing to go
outside for anything other than shoveling, haunting the barn for bags of wood
pellets to feed the stove, and tromping out to the mailbox. I grumbled, a lot.
This has been the worst winter on
record for many regions across the US. Record lows. Record snowfalls. Record
winds. Record yuck. Nobody seemed to
escape the mess; reports would come in from various family members all over,
and it was the same everywhere. Slush in the streets, cars spinning out on the
freeway, ice coating the trees, inches of snow on the patio, breath-stealing
winter air. And that was just in Atlanta.
Twice a year, I go home to Alaska.
I have family in Fairbanks; darling daughter Sue Ann, handsome son-in-law John,
and my adorable granddaughter, Faith. I spend at least a month playing
Mom/Grandma catch up, and one of my trips invariably hits in mid-winter. Just
the luck of the draw, I suppose. Friends and other family members always ask me
why on earth I don’t travel north during the summer when Interior Alaska is at
its most glorious. Well, this winter I finally had an answer that made them
shut up in a hurry:
“My winter in Fairbanks was better
than your winter, anywhere else!”
And I wasn’t lying even a little
bit.
I landed at Fairbanks International
Airport on February 9, mid-afternoon. I’d left Albany, New York early that
morning wrapped in a heavy winter coat that I barely took off even on the
plane. I wore my Uggs instead of packing them (my feet never got overheated
during the entire trip). And thinking ahead to what February in Fairbanks
usually meant, I steeled myself for the worst.
I spent the next thirty days with
my coat unzipped, my hat abandoned and my gloves tucked in my pockets instead
of on my hands. Oh, I’d have had to bundle up if I’d spent any amount of time
outside, of course. Yet I took Faith outside sledding one day with no hat and
never even noticed the lack.
I basked in the windless calm of a
standard winter day in Fairbanks, secure in the knowledge that some things
don’t change regardless of what kind of crud “Ma” Nature can splat on the rest
of the world. I returned to New York refreshed, energized, and warm.
But not for long, because
immediately I caught a cold. Then after I fought it off, I got sideswiped with
bronchitis. I’m still coughing and blowing my nose. Go figure.
I guess what I brought back from
all of this has less to do with the vagaries of winter and more to do with
attitude. I think in some ways you can persuade your body to accept and then
believe the opposite of what it expects to accept and believe. I lived in
Fairbanks for many winters and I know what February is going to bring to my
table: forty below, ice fog, black ice on the roads and the need to plug the
car into the nearest available hot box so the engine doesn’t gag and die. What
I tend to forget it also brings: calm, clear, crisp, gloriously bright albeit
short days and long, snuggle-in-your-jammies nights. In that respect, my month
of Arctic was blessedly, familiarly normal.
It’s all the other junk this winter
that tossed me for a loop and made me want to stab Mother Nature with the
nearest icicle I could break off the rain gutter.
Attitude is everything when dealing
with unseasonably weird weather. Maybe you’ll catch the flu anyhow even if you
were diligent and took the shot. Maybe this summer will be just as
disappointing when it finally decides to show up. Whatever we all get, I’ve
decided I’m not going to let it bother me, because we can’t control what mean
old Mommy Nature dishes out.
But mainly because I’m headed back
to Fairbanks this summer—sometime after RWA and San Antonio—and this time hubby
Don can break away long enough to go with me.
::Happy Dancing amongst the mosquitoes::
We’ll take some time, soak up the
long, long days, enjoy our family; marinate ourselves in DEET so we can spend
lots of time outside. Maybe we’ll stay longer than a month. Maybe we won’t come
back until break up, 2015.
Yep, attitude is everything.
Char Chaffin is a member of AKRWA
and CNYRW, a die-hard displaced Alaskan, and has just published her third
novel, Jesse’s Girl. She goes home to
Fairbanks when she can, hangs out on a sixty-acre farm in Upstate New York when
she can’t, and divides her time between writing her next novel and being an
Acquisitions Editor for Soul Mate Publishing.
You can find her here:
website: http://char.chaffin.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/char.chaffin
Twitter: http://twitter.com/char_chaffin
Book Trailer for Jesse’s Girl:
