Good Morning, Chicago Winter

It’s a garden-variety Wednesday. I wave to the departing school bus, rein in the hyperactive mutt on her leash, and begin my daily walk.

The light, gentle breeze is exactly the kind of breeze that’s exceptionally pleasant on a hot summer day, lifting the sweat from your sweltering skin. However, it’s February in Chicagoland, so that breeze turns a doable 25-degree morning into a yank-the-scarf-across-the-face, let's-get-this-over-with morning. I briefly fantasize about reclining in a chaise lounge on a sandy beach, smelling salt water and suntan lotion and complaining about the heat.

My feet make a rubbery crunching sound as they squash down the snow. The freezing rain sounds like crackling Rice Krispies as it peppers every surface. Half a block away, a tall truck barrels down a cross street, shaking loose a flutter of snow from the trees next to the road.

Some people dwell in hot climates where it never snows, like my cousin (the lucky stiff) who lives on the island of O’ahu. Some people romanticize snow, having seen it only in picture postcards and Norman Rockwell paintings. For the benefit of those people, I would like to provide some clarifying details.

When the snow first falls, the landscape looks like a gorgeous cake, covered with perfectly smooth, white frosting, dotted with icing-covered trees and rooftops. A few hours later, after people have shoveled, trudged, and driven over it, the landscape looks like a cake after several dozen children dipped their grubby fingers into the frosting, licked their fingers, and went back in for more. The mutilated cake then becomes your daily scenery until either everything melts or it snows again. Beautiful, ain’t it?

Did I mention that I detest snow? I really should be living in Puerto Rico. And yet… sigh. Only 27 and a half days until spring!

Up ahead of me, on the white sidewalk, a neat row of size 12 footprints parallels a tidy row of dog footprints. It’s a sweet little picture, painted in snowflakes, of companionship between a human and an obedient pet. Then I look at my own dog, bounding randomly through the snowbanks, plowing her nose through the white powder like a canine bulldozer, shaking off the snow with abandon, and sprinting away from me until the leash yanks her up short for the ten thousandth time. I ponder what it’s like to be that person with the orderly footprints.

This winter has been an endless succession of freezing, thawing, melting, and re-freezing. As a result, an invisible sheet of slippery ice coats the sidewalks, hidden underneath the couple inches of snow that fell last night. I know this, but I forget all about it as my mind wanders, editing my recent writing in my head, thinking about the story I’d like to pitch to a magazine.

Suddenly, my boots start to slide. My feet whip out from under me as I gracefully crash-land on my tailbone. The dog grins at me, tongue lolling.

Thanks to the cushioning of my fluffy, ankle-length, down-filled coat (plus some additional padding left over from the Christmas cookies I ate in the not-too-distant past), I am unharmed.

I cackle, brush off the snow off my butt, and wonder how much it would cost for a last-minute flight to Puerto Rico.