A Life Without Winters
Reflections during a February that feels like summer
It feels bizarre – as someone who spent most of their life in Illinois – that February can just be like this here.
It is in the 70s and sunny and it feels like the end of spring on the cusp of summer. Everyone is out in droves, soaking up the weather and the sunshine.
I complain about it being “warmer than I expected” on a given day, sweating through my unnecessary cardigan on a walk to get coffee.
And then I think about the times I trudged through a blizzard to get to the Red Line, or walked 30 minutes in single-digit temperatures to go get groceries.
It almost feels unnatural for the winters to feel like this.
But it also feels like there’s no going back.
Before I moved here, I worried I wouldn’t fit in. Even though I was drawn to here, knew I had to move out here when I did, and couldn’t be talked out of it by anyone (a rarity), I still wondered if I’d be able to shed the Chicago in me once I arrived.
Could I survive in a city where you never need a down coat? Would I even look good or like “myself” in clothes that weren’t all black or made of heavy wool?
I have learned a lot of things about myself in the last three years, and not just about what types of clothes I can wear or how quickly I can get used to a life without winters.
It turns out that when you stop drinking, after it was something you did in excess for all of your adult life, you have to come into yourself again and again. It never ends, I’m afraid. I am always coming into myself. Even when I am exasperated and spent and burnt out on coming into myself, it just keeps on.
I can’t stop shedding and I think because of all the shedding, I forget about the parts that are growing.
Mostly though, I worry that I am still somehow falling behind. By whose chart or standards, I don’t know.
Very rarely, like now, can I remember that it’s okay if it takes a while.
Anyways. The point is: it’s February 24th and the high today in Los Angeles will be 75 degrees. I will go on my morning walk and I will take in the sounds of the song sparrows and the sight of the fluttering copper hues of the Allen’s hummingbirds and the bright fuchsias of the bougainvillea.
That’s about all I can do, for now.
