Brrrr cold!

Monday was sunny; Tuesday was cloudy. Then Wednesday and Thursday inexplicably descended into wintry despair. It's better today, the expected high is in the low 50s (degrees Fahrenheit).

I am devoting a post to the banalities of weather in part because I came across this picture of a snow monkey (also known as a Japanese macaque, though I tend to think of them as spa monkeys). I also happen to believe that weather is far from banal. It determines what I do and colors how I feel; to say that it's mere backdrop to my life is to ignore just how often it intrudes into the foreground. I didn't realize this until I came to college, when the vagaries of New England weather made a wreck of my winters. I thought about investing in a sun lamp.

When it's cold -- not so much that I can't think of anything but the ache in my ears but enough that I instinctively hunch inwards -- I am reminded of home, the familiarity of a brick house and the warmth of the kitchen. I think of Thanksgiving, Cowboys game on the TV, and my parents' cooking. I'm idealizing, of course: my parents routinely turn the thermostat down to save money and energy, so our house is often punishingly cold, the Cowboys haven't been worth watching since their glory days in the early 1990s, and I have spent every Thanksgiving in the last three years away from home (each time building on this nostalgic longing).

This year, though, I'm going home on November 26th. So, each day I walk through the Yard, shivering and kicking fallen leaves, is one day closer to home.