I’ve always regarded the weather with a certain amount of fear. Growing up in a California town named for cows but known for heat, I learned to hide from the sun. I spent my summers in a darkened bedroom, sprawled on the floor with a fan blowing hot air. I read library books until the sun went down, at which point I’d emerge, sticky and cranky, and cross the day off the calendar, counting how many were left until I could sit in an air-conditioned classroom.
I was a fun kid.
My friends seemed to weather summer with more grace. They swam and tanned. They ate popsicles and rode their bikes to the creek. I’d study them from the shade of a tree, scowling and sweating, observing them like animals in a habitat for which my pelt was unsuited, my fur too thick and blood too warm. I’d retreat to my cave, to my drawn curtains and books, wondering where I could roam free.
As soon as I graduated high school, I headed to the East Bay. Oakland had great food, diverse communities and vibrant cultures. But for me it was about what it didn’t have, which is months upon months of relentless heat. Soul-crushing, thigh-chafing, oppressive heat.
Unlike Vacaville, Oakland sits near the ocean and fog rolls in like clockwork, buffering me in a cool blanket. Each morning I see gray skies and smile. What a beautiful day, I think, as my hair frizzes in the fog. I rejoice as my pupils dilate in the gloom. I throw my curtains open to the sound of rainfall, all the while ignoring the grumbles and complaints around me. How many days until summer? Um, hopefully forever. Who’s counting?
I am still the odd one out, the freak who doesn’t like the sun. But I’m a happy freak who has found a nice cool circus tent.
I make no judgments about sun-worshippers. I simply don’t relate. I have a friend, for example, who lived in an apartment on the edge of Sausalito. Her deck overlooked the water and she could see both bridges: the Bay to the right, the Golden Gate to the left. How much do you love this view, I marveled. She shrugged. It’s so foggy. She’s a sun-worshiper too. Which she got me to thinking.
Maybe we are victims of our meteorological childhoods. She grew up in Wisconsin and walked to school in blizzards. She’s told me how her eyebrows and nose hairs froze into icicles the moment she stepped outside. How she’d be trapped inside for months, going stir-crazy in the house waiting for a thaw. How it felt to be cold, so cold that her bones ached. How it was to live in the snow. The relentless snow. Maybe we’re both right. Maybe she was just too cold for too long and I too hot.
I romanticize cold weather because, as a native Californian, I have never experienced true cold. I imagined it to be living in a life-sized snow globe, a winter wonderland, days of sledding and mittens and cocoa. Like Christmas, all the time. When I moved to North Carolina for a brief time, my delusions were shattered. One morning, everything was white. I stepped onto my front porch and slipped, landing on my butt. I called my Wisconsin friend in a panic. It’s snowing, I said. Do I just, like, drive to work?
She paused, looking for the kindest way inform me that I was an idiot. Yes, she said. You drive to work. Just slower.
Huh, I thought. I inched down my street, creeped onto the freeway. My tires slipped and I did what I read about in the driver’s ed booklet. I turned into the skid. It didn’t make me feel much better. I gripped the steering wheel until my knuckles were as white as the snow. I got to work in one piece and decided maybe North Carolina wasn’t for me. But that didn’t mean I had to love the sun.
Last year’s fires cast a towering shadow over California. We are going into this summer with our eyes open. Local fire stations have had community meetings about how to clear out weeds, to abandon your belongings and get out while you can. PG&E has sent letters warning, in the emotionless language of a cake recipe, that they’ll cut everyone’s power – whole cities’ worth, for days on end – if there’s even a hint of fire danger. Get some lanterns. Put your cold-storage medications on ice. Buy a generator. Prepare for the worst. After last year, we are bankrupt and can’t help you.
I talk to my friends about what they keep in their pantry. How many flashlights they have. How much cash. I imagine being in the heat and darkness with my husband and dog, eating tuna fish out of a can while my groceries spoil, hoping I have enough gas to go somewhere if we have to evacuate. My friends and neighbors worry about the same things. This summer it’s not just about being hot. We all agree that if the heat beats down and the wind kicks up – if one power line falls into the dry grass – things could get very bad very quickly.
At last I am in step with everyone around me. We can look forward to winter together.