Falling upon the sexiness of frigid Canada

The lovely, earnest, sincere Gwen Bell has issued a blog challenge to do a year in review, writing each day in December.  The theme:  Best of 2009.  (You can click on the above link to see what my daily blog topics will be this month.)

Today:  Best trip of 2009.

Well. If you've been reading along for a while, you know already that in August I flew sans enfants to London-- England, not Ontario-- where I met up with My Burtons who drove me to their old stone mill-home in rural West Wales.  It was dreamy, waking up alone in a cushy captain's bed with the sound of a stream outside my window, waiting for lovely people with charming accents to bring me breakfast.  I didn't want to come home.  I was seriously bummed out by Canada for a good long while.  Specifically, until yesterday.  Okay, truth be told I'm still bummed out but I did have a small epiphany yesterday.

* * *

A sudden blizzard had turned our bare roads and blessed browny-green grass into 4 inches of fluff and it was still coming down hard.  In a rush to get to the post office, I drove with a small mountain of snow on the hood of my Standard Mom Vehicle to the full-serve Co-op gas station where the nice ladies, somewhat bewildered at my snow-besotted state, voluntarily swept me clean.  I sat upon my heated seat, giving them a thumbs up and a smile. 

I was happy, despite this attack upon my September soul because a package was wedged in the passenger seat beside me, a package assembled with love and destined for Spain, and I thought about how my expat Spanish friend has probably never had the pleasure of driving in a Canadian blizzard.  Sure, she's visited castles and ancient Roman ruins.  So the Spanish beaches are only an hour's drive away and on a whim she can decide to spend part of her day snapping photos of terribly old Gothic cathedrals.  But has she had to stop her van every ten minutes to manually brush the snow from her side windows so she can back up safely?   Has she experienced the rush of adrenaline that comes from not knowing whether the van will stop in time to not hit that oncoming car that has the right of way, as the van struggles to brake on the packed snow, despite its slow pace well in advance of the stop sign ahead?

I was happy because I imagined the package to her family beside me was really her, and I talked to her in my mind, touring her around my town.  It was exciting, this first big snowfall of the season.  We sat at the bar in Taco Time, looking out the window at the frozen diagonal downpour and waited for little Lulu to finish her "Mexifries".   Looking out on the white expanse only vaguely resembling a parking lot because of some white shapes vaguely resembling some vehicles parked randomly, I mused with pride at how cities in the US would declare a snow day over what is just business as usual for us soldiers.  We trudged through the snow back to the van, some of it getting into our boots, snowflakes pelleting our hair, making a thin crunchy helmet after sticking.  I brushed the windows again.  I scraped some snow that had melted on the previously warm windows that cooled to ice beads while Lulu took her time desecrating potato corks with plum sauce.  I gloated for my guest's nervousness as I twisted about slightly on the roads.   Noticing the flickering TCS light on the dashboard she asked what it meant. "Traction Control System", I answered with cool importance.  Glamorous stuff.

(What a tease I am.  Sorry.  This is an original Canada Moms Blog post and you'll have to click here to finish reading the rest of this post.  It gets better.  I'm not allowed to post the full piece here.)

#best09

Comments

[Erin]

So beautiful.

[Dare]

Romantic culture and poutine all within the same thought = pure awesome.
Love it!

[Gwen Bell]

You're right. We're total lightweights. Except those of us in Colorado. We know snow.

[Sam]

Gwen is right. We here in Colorado know snow, but I think springs still shows up earlier here. I think anywhere that makes missionaries from California and Florida cry just a little must have a little Canada mixed in.

I liked what you said about where you are at emotionally being the difference in how you feel about winter. Thanks.

[Sam, the Nanti-SARRMM]

Posting everyday in a month? Isn't that what NaNoBloMo encourages? To write everyday of November?

[gabriellevalentine]

I love the romantic view of the weather. I would love to move to Canada (actually ALMOST anywhere besides Spokane!)
I loved the snow when I lived in Baltimore (until age of 13). When we moved to Washington, there were real mountains right down the street and snow. A lot. And now, I don't like the snow or ice. But I still love the romantic feeling I get when I think of snow and ice, as you describe here. =)