On Tuesday, February 27, I had to call in sick to work. I wasn’t sick, but my kids had colds, and so to spare their babysitter, I took a day off. February in Wisconsin is a notoriously dark month. Always cold, often snowy, with Christmas a distant memory and spring an intangible dream. In Wisconsin in February, all magic and majesty associated with winter have dissipated. You ask yourself, why am I here?
But on Tuesday, the temperature hit the 70s. I took my children to a bakery, my son and I got pastries, we walked to the park. We sat in the sandbox, and it was so sunny that I took my daughter’s socks off so she could feel the sand on her feet. I took a picture of her, her chubby arms and legs exposed to the bright sun. It was a lovely day. A little girl asked my son if he would be “her very best friend,” and I heard him say, “Well, of course.” He went down the slide without my coaxing (a big change since last year). A squirrel poked its head into the bottom of our stroller, took my son’s leftover pastry, and feasted on it in the tree above us, to the amazement of all the nearby adults.
Throughout our time at the park, though, I could not appreciate the loveliness. I looked at a mom in a tank top, at kids in sandals, and I thought, this is wrong. This is bad. It’s coming for us.
Climate change has been happening, obviously, but Wisconsin has, according to all those predictive maps, been one of those places least likely to be affected by it. Tuesday was the first time I felt its impacts first-hand, felt rattled by our lack of immunity. And visions of those maps came back to me. Did they say we wouldn’t be affected? Or did it just say that we would become a more temperate place?
A temperate climate, of course, has its advantages. During the usual winter months in Wisconsin, you’re mostly forced inside. It’s boring, and it’s isolating. You try to entertain your children inside the house for another day in a row and you want to die. A temperate climate would relieve you of these horrors. But Wisconsin, as I’ve always known it, wasn’t meant to be temperate. February is shitty, but that’s what February is. When the thermometer on my car hit 73 degrees, I panicked. Will my kids have winter? Will they experience snow? What will Wisconsin be without its distinct seasons? Furthermore, if we’re hitting 73 in February right now, what will it be like in 20 years? All my fears about climate change surged to the front of my mind, and I envisioned a life of fire, of smoke, of drought.
The world is always changing, and no person’s children can have the same exact childhood they had. When I was a teenager, my parents had to navigate cell phones, MySpace, AOL instant messenger. They were not prepared for social media to take over the world, but it did, and they managed. I knew that life for my kids would look different than it did for me, at least I did on some level. I guess I anticipated them getting bullied on SnapChat, though, and not them going hungry from decreased food production.
In the grand scheme of climate change, the disappearance of winter is a small loss, but it’s one that I’m sure I’ll need to grieve just the same. The great beauty of the Midwest is the seasons. I remember talking to a guy in a bar my first year in California. “Weather’s amazing here, right?” he said. I told him I missed winter, and he could not believe that I was being earnest. “You’re lying,” he kept repeating. And certainly, I didn’t miss the length of winter, or the logistics of winter, the shoveling, the ice on my windshield, the necessity of mittens and scarves and hats. But there is nothing like waking up to see the world transformed into white, the trees sparkling. For a time, it is exciting to be trapped inside, shut off from the world. And then there is the promise that it won’t last forever, that spring will come, that this is cold but it is temporary. The seasons create rhythm, and I wonder if this rhythm will be gone by the time my kids are old enough to remember it.
On Wednesday, the day after our sunny afternoon in the park, it snowed here in Wisconsin. It felt like February again, it felt like how it should be, and my panic settled back into a subtle gnawing in the back of my brain. Is this the problem with climate change, that it doesn’t really scare us until it’s outside, at our doorstep?
As usual, your writing is insightful, descriptive, and, well, brilliant. If you ever want to self-publish something--your posts or pieces from your act, I could help you with that (um, for no charge, of course). These self-publishing books really don't sell much on amazon (except to friends and family), but you could make a couple bucks a book selling them at your gigs. I don't really do much with it anymore, but here's my site: https://trentonhousepublishing.com/. Best wishes, and continued brilliance :).
I'm still trying to subscribe, I still can't. "This Connect account cannot currently make live charges. The `requirements.disabled_reason` property on the account will provide information about why this account is currently disabled. If you are a customer trying to make a purchase, please contact the owner of this site. Your transaction has not been processed."
Of course, maybe you don't want the constant pressure to produce (yeah, I'd like more posts ... is that too much?). Love your work. Sorry about winter.