319. SNOW SOUNDED LIKE FUN – IN THEORY

Holy Mother of God and His Cousin Henry, Minnesota is freaking cold. Yes, yes, I am sure it has always been this cold. Yes, yes, I lived here for a very long time. Yes, yes, I should stop complaining. But I was always a super huge pansy when it came to frigid winds that blow in from Canada.

But as an adult who now lives in New York, this weather is insane. What possesses people to live here? What possesses immigrants to move? What possesses me to come back? I wonder as I use my suitcase to shield me (ineffectively) from the cold air.

I stand a few feet away from the sliding glass doors of MSP and watch cars drive up and load their arriving friends and family. It is a little odd too, to see the license plates. I am used to ones that saw Empire State. I am used to a sea of yellow taxi cabs. This is another reason I don’t live here anymore. Driving makes me skittish. It always has. For me driving was a taxing, daily, challenge. I suppose almost totaling my parents’ brand new Jeep Cherokee and almost killing myself when I was 17 doesn’t help.

I find being driven a better experience. And no I don’t mean having my own driver. I mean sticking my hand out and waving a cabbie over or riding public transportation. There are buses and light rail in Minnesota – but they don’t seem to go where I want to.

The sliding glass doors whoosh open and a blast of cold air rushes in. The air is so cold it could snap and even the air doesn’t want to be outside. It makes me wonder if my parents would have left warm India for cold Minnesota had they known this was a place where snow falls in big, fat flakes, slicks over the roads and created black ice. That winter in Minnesota was disingenuous and deceptively wicked. That you have to be a native Minnesotan to know that December 21st-- did not denote the beginning of winter in Minnesota. It sometimes starts in October.

I am pretty sure no one told Dad about the mischievous whim of Mother Nature and her flurried frenzy that rendered a battalion of plows immobile. If anyone had mentioned brutal cold to Dad I am sure in a moment of stubbornness he would have told the person to go to hell. Considering what India was like in the 1960s I can understand how snow could sound like fun – in theory. But considering reality – I am so glad that I flit in today and flit out in two weeks!