Just last week I read online that the Great Lakes were only declared ice free on June 11th this year – one of the latest dates for the ice to finally melt in years. Perhaps this explains why it has taken me so long this year to accept that winter is really over and that summer is now on. (Another reason is that spring seems to have lasted about a day. One morning trees that just the day before had been bare were now bright green, like Cinderella transformed into a princess with a whoosh of her fairy godmother’s wand.) This winter was the worst and solidified my reliance on the Weather Network’s website. While waiting for my kettle to whistle each morning, the first website I checked was the Weather Network’s. Checking the weather became such a normal part of my day that I am still doing it (albeit not as the first website I visit each morning), eager to know whether it will rain and spoil the sunshiney days I consistently hope for.
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| Cinderella's Fairy Godmother and her magic wang |
On the second last day of May and the eve of our departure from
living near Lake Huron, D. and I drove out to Sauble Beach to finally, at the
last possible opportunity, see one of its famous sunsets. At the horizon, in
the exact spot where the sun dipped below the water, we could still see a line
of ice. As the sun went down, orange light shimmered and gleamed on the ice
causing a glare much worse than the normal glare of the sun. I drove out to
Sauble alone around 6 pm one day at the end of April and walked along its
mostly deserted beach. I could still see big chunks of ice floating not too far
from the shore. I imagined an obstacle course of ice stretching all the way to
Michigan. Maybe someone was also walking on a deserted beach in Michigan at
that same moment, contemplating the ice and imagining leapfrogging across it
all the way to Ontario.
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| The sunset we saw was more orange and there was less ice but this picture gives the general idea |
I used to think it was cliché to talk about the weather; that
bringing it up in conversation meant I had nothing else to say. I don’t think
that anymore. In fact, I now like talking about the weather and bring it up not
for lack of anything else to say but because I like the subject; I like to hear
what other people think about it, how cold they thought it was, how much they,
too, yearn for summer, what their favourite season is, etc. etc. When I studied
in Santiago in the first half of 2005, I was surrounded by the southern
hemisphere’s fall when all I wanted was to be in springtime. A girl in this
class I took on Neruda and Mistral – Chile’s two most famous poets – which had
almost exclusively third year abroad students told everyone that fall was her
favourite season and so she was happy to have two in one year. I felt glad for
her but also envious, as she was finding happiness in one of the aspects of
Santiago which was most bringing me down. I still think of that nameless girl
(I can sort of hazily still picture her but never knew her name) on days I am
most disliking fall. A.’s favourite season is fall too. I don’t understand it
but I find it comforting. At least some people are happy in the season I find
the most difficult.
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| Late fall at its finest and what I most dislike |
A client of my dad’s married a weather woman from TV. They met at
the grocery store after he recognized, and then approached her. This all happened
when I was a kid and I always thought it was so cool. I loved how he recognized
her, how the weather brought them together, and I thought – and still do – that
being a weather woman is such a cool job. Despite the majority of one’s job
consisting of pointing to projections and big swirley storms on the screen, it
seems very glamorous.
A friend of my brother’s, N., is a weather woman on the Weather Network and is broadcast across Canada. She sort of just fell into the job; she’d hosted a show on a cable network and then that led to a job with the Weather Network. She’s really taken to it though and is studying online for a masters degree in meteorology from a university in Mississippi. (Not sure why it’s from a university there – maybe it is one of the few schools to both offer the degree and offer it online). I loved learning that N. and many of her colleagues are studying for (or already have) their masters in meteorology. It makes the job I found so glamorous as a kid even more sophisticated – now that I know brains and studying of weather patterns is involved too.
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