Column: Al Batt, Tales form Exit 22

It was so cold, I had to scrape the window on the microwave, my wristwatch was blowing on its hands, and my mailman called and read my bills to me over the phone.

Never double-dog dare a thermometer.

Winter begins on Dec. 21.

That’s a lie perpetuated by someone who owns neither a thermometer nor a window.

Winter begins when people have the urge to hibernate. This comes with the realization that nature is trying to kill us. It’s when each driver becomes an ice road trucker, and we say goodbye to fall with a cold wave.

You know it’s winter (the annual running of the noses) when hearing the weather report makes you cold. Meteorologists accurately forecast storms that never happen, predicting 29 of the last two winter storms.

Winter (a season with sharp elbows) hits hard. We know it’s coming, but when it arrives, it’s unexpected. We forget past winters. Each day brings expectations, yet winter comes as a surprise. The problem is that winter doesn’t come alone. Each winter is accompanied by those that preceded it. In the age of shovelry (when even light snow is heavy), snowflakes knit themselves into a snowbank that covers the ground like discount linoleum.

The cold has a voice. It’s the whisper of the wind and the squeak of snow under boots. We have two kinds of weather in winter — light and cold, and dark and cold. We no longer get winters like those I remember. We get winters I can’t forget.

Winter bends us to its will. We need to overlook some of its idiosyncrasies. Things like a wind blowing so strong from the north that we can smell polar bears, roads that become Mission Impassable, colds lasting as long as political campaigns, snow angels made unintentionally, dry air that produces enough dry skin that it needs to be shoveled from the house, donning all the clothes you own before venturing outside, static shocks that turn doorknobs into electric chairs, some parts getting to 20 below zero and those are the parts we’d like to keep warm, whiteout conditions that resemble an explosion at the pillow factory, that mournful sound a car makes as its battery dies, snowmobile suits adding pounds to photographs, learning to do everything while wearing gloves, blowing snow snaking across the road looking for a drift to call home, waving goodbye to money to the sound of the furnace kicking in and staying in (those with money to burn save on heating bills), hearing the story of a friend of a friend’s neighbor whose cousin’s coworker’s schoolmate’s uncle who once had his tongue stuck to a frosty flagpole, wondering who the strange man in the stocking cap is, using a cell phone while wearing mittens, the snowplow driver who waits until you clear your drive before going by and filling it with packed snow as hard as concrete, the thrill of doing the splits on an icy sidewalk, the neighbor letting you use his snowblower as long as you don’t take it off his property, spending two hours a day putting on winter clothing, participating in the popular winter sport of using jumper cables on car batteries, wiping your runny nose on your sleeve because it takes too long to remove your mittens, children waiting at the end of a driveway on a frigid morning for a school bus with no heater, the heat of a cup of coffee being as welcome as the flavor, frozen hair when rushing from the house after a shower, and parents hoping that school isn’t canceled due to weather on days that children are hoping school would be called off.

If you can put up with these things, winter is lovable.

Winter may be a season crammed with good days to stay inside out of, but as I polish my snowshoes and eat bad food just for the heartburn, I recognize there are joys to be found while our coldest season battles global warming. The delight of a warm bed on a cold night, the wonder of Jack Frost’s design on a window, a snowfall that comes straight down, and warm socks. Those reassuring tire tracks that point and say, “Someone went this way” in the snow on a road that tests character. Not having to worry about closing the door to keep out the flies. Winter may offer cold, snow, ice, and wind, but there are no mosquitoes.

Winter seems long but it may be too short. It’s never long enough for me to get the lawn mower running.

It’ll get colder before it gets warmer. The snow must go on.

Winter is how we earn spring.

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.