I live in Alabama. I can’t say I chose to live in Alabama, because I was a child of the Navy. I still have not figured out how Dad ended up with orders to head up the recruiting district in the great Naval metropolis of Montgomery, Alabama. But once I got here, I stayed, except for a three year sabbatical to North Carolina when my husband and I were first married. So, it’s safe to say that even if I didn’t choose to live here initially, I have adopted Alabama as my home state.
To live in Alabama means you accept certain things as a given. You accept that from the middle of June through the middle of October you will be living in shorts and staying in air conditioning as much as possible. You accept that come the Fourth of July, you will prefer to watch “A Capitol Fourth” on PBS rather than go to a live fireworks show due to the heat. You accept that your Halloween trick-or-treating will be characterized by heat and humidity rather than the delightful nip of fall the rest of the nation experiences. You accept that the mythical white Christmas will not be your lot in life, and that you will have a drab brown Christmas outside, but at least the kids can play a pick-up flag football game outside that day.
You do not accept waking in the morning to the thermometer's pronouncement that it is a balmy nine degrees outside. You do not accept that you must leave the pipes dripping for a week because the low temperatures increase the chances that your pipes will burst. You do not accept that you have to put on a jacket whenever you leave the house. (Wearing a jacket is my winter bête noire.) And you definitely do not accept that the temperatures will not go above freezing at any time in a given twenty-four-hour period.
I don’t know how those of you in more Northern climes do it. I have never once woken up with the blinding realization that my life will be incomplete until I experience single digit temperatures for a week or more. Nor do I regret the fact that (normally) I do not have to fight ice and snow during my daily commute.
What I have been forced to accept is any forecast beginning with the words “This air mass originated in Siberia….” can’t be good. Thanks to Siberia’s generous gift, we won’t edge north of pipe-dripping temperatures at night time until Saturday.
What weather makes you most uncomfortable? Have you used the weather in your writing effectively?
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