I spoke with my sister in L.A. yesterday and she was sad this year that spring had come and yet nothing had changed in her city. \u201cBeautiful day today, beautiful day yesterday, beautiful day tomorrow,\u201d she lamented. <\/span> It seems odd, but there is a cost to living in city where the weather patterns alter only slightly with the seasons. \u201cOur bodies,\u201d she noted, \u201care made for seasons.\u201d<\/p>\n At least I know mine is, and apparently hers too. Perhaps its our ancestry: 1\/4 Polish, 1\/4 English, 1\/4 Scottish, and 1\/2 Irish<\/span> (the last one is to see if you\u2019re any good at math, and also to emphasize that it\u2019s the ancestry that we most identify with). In truth we\u2019re roughly a 1\/4 each, but we all know these are just convenient approximations and mere labels. History, like the rest of reality, evades cookie-cutters and precise measurements<\/span>. <\/p>\n I just found out last spring, for instance, that my Polish grandma Bogowski (previously spelled Bojgowski, an offshoot of 19th century Polish royalty) also had an Irish grandmother.<\/p>\n My sister and I are also children of Montana, a state of dramatic seasonal changes. Even as kids in the \u201980s, the summers were dry and hot with many days in the upper 90s and the occasional 100+ degree day or two. Then, sometimes it would snow in August. After what were usually mellow and beautiful autumns, it always seemed that we would get our first real blizzard on Halloween night \u2013 we\u2019d sprint from a parent\u2019s car to a door, shout out \u201ctk-r-teet\u201d as fast as possible, collect our goodies and sprint back to the car, yelling \u201cannnks\u201d over our shoulders at the already closed doors<\/span>.<\/p>\n In the rural Helena valley, where we grew up, wind was always an issue. In the spring and summer it was nice \u2013 house-shaking and howling at times \u2013 but nice. In the winter though it could pull the heat through as many layers as mom could stuff us in. <\/span> We learned to walk backward or sideways with our hoods pulled tight to avoid any direct exposure. If you had to walk straight into it you kept your face pointed straight down, watching your own feet as you walked.<\/p>\n So when spring did come it was like the end of a really long, unhappy novel. At some point we had lost touch with the reality that winter <\/span>would end<\/span>, that it was just one <\/span>season<\/span>. It had become everything. As if hiking a mountain with countless false summits, we simply began to believe it would not end as we clung to daily survival in this new world of blinding white and wind. <\/p>\n But it happened. And like so many novel\u2019s endings, it just happened<\/span>. It was unexpected. One day it was 25 degrees, then 45 and sunny and we would play in the snow. <\/span> Then 50 for a couple days and soon the snow was gone \u2013 at last, for good (ignoring the freak snow-storms that always came in either May or June to remind us of winter\u2019s wrath). <\/p>\n And so it is now; winter\u2019s strong grip is breaking. The hilltop snows are dissapearing and the sun is shining long and bright. Time to be out<\/span> enjoying it (that is, working on a presentation).<\/p>\n * not to be confused with this springtime. I spoke with my sister in L.A. yesterday and she was sad this year that spring had come and yet nothing had changed in her city. \u201cBeautiful day today, beautiful day yesterday, beautiful day tomorrow,\u201d she lamented. It seems odd, but there is a cost to living […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogger.googleusercontent.com\/tracker\/7907151-1147393025370105433?l=americanbuddhist.blogspot.com\")