Well, I was talking to my good friend Captain Mike yesterday, and he was verbally beating me about the head and shoulders trying to convinvce me that I need to move back to Florida. Part of this stems from seeing my DH recently while he was down there, but I know a lot of it also comes from the absolute sense of unreality that people who live in the warm southern states have when confronted with the fact that some people actually prefer to live in the 'frozen North'.
My whole life, I have been a cold-weather kind of girl. I remember swimming in Lake Superior in the late spring to early summer... my lips were blue after five minutes, my teeth chattering after fifteen, but I didn't want to get out of the water. My dad, half-jokingly, accused me of being part seal. I never did learn to balance a ball on my nose, to my great disappointment, but I also never developed an aversion to cold weather.
My parents decided in 1997 to move to Florida. They had visited some friends down there, and loved the weather and the "Florida lifestyle". I was living with them at the time, so they asked if I wanted to come along for the ride, so to speak. Having spent the previous winter with no car, riding a bike or trudging through the snow/slush/crud the two miles to work, and then returning to a barely heated apartment (and -big surprise!- ending up with a bad case of bronchitis), year-round sunshine and beaches sounded like heaven to me.
We moved there in July. Bad idea. The heat was so intense that we could only work on unloading the moving truck for about twenty minutes at a time, before taking a break to lie down in the a/c and guzzle water to try and replace the gallons it seemed we had sweated out.
And no one warned me about the wildlife. I knew about the cockroaches - I wasn't pleased, but I thought I could handle it... until I figured out that they were running rampant in my garage/bedroom. I used to bring the cat out into the garage with me when I went to bed, so that he could hunt the darn things while I slept. I eventually came to an understanding with them... as long as they didn't fly or climb onto my bed, I refrained from squishing them, and limited the Raid to a once-monthly spray of the corners. It worked - sort of. But that still left lizards, who always managed to get in and scare the living he!! out of me when I was least expecting it - like when I opened my dresser drawers, when I went to bed without turning on a light, or even on one memorable occassion, dropping unannounced on my head from the ceiling.
You had to keep your small pets on a leash, because there were alligators in the canals. And retaining ponds. And swamps, and any other semi-damp spot around. We lived in a bird sanctuary, and saw cranes, herons and pelicans hanging out in the yards on a regular basis. Now, except for the occassional swan or goose flying overhead, my idea of backyard birds was cute little songbirds, not these gigantic things that ate meat and looked as if they'd like nothing better than to pluck out your eyeballs with their long beaks. And don't even get me started on the rats. They're called fruit rats, and supposedly they only eat fruit, but they're still rats.
When DH and I bought our house, we were thrilled about it... Until we saw the size of the spiders that had decided to join us in our new home. I was never really afraid of spiders before, I remember playing with daddy long legs, and catching spiders because my mother didn't like them, and safely transferring them outside. But these things were beyond spiders. Even the smaller ones were about three times the size of the largest one I had ever seen before, and the bigger ones were as big as your hand. I wouldn't let the boys go outside for a week after I found a black widow had taken up residence next to our back door.
'But what about the weather?' Captain Mike asked me. 'You know you can't beat the weather... I mean, the median temperature is 76 degrees'. Yes, but 76 degrees in Michigan or Pennsylvania is a lot different that 76 in Florida. In the northern states, 76 is warm, usually with a light breeze and low humidity. Perfect for a barbecque in the backyard during the summer. In Florida, it's 76 with massive humidity and blinding sunlight... all the time. My DH and I wanted to have an outdoor wedding, so we picked mid-fall for our wedding date. In October, it was over 80 degrees outside, I was wearing forty pounds of wedding dress and my poor husband was in a black tuxedo. I didn't even bother putting any make-up on because I knew I would just sweat it right off. And they call Florida the sunshine state... well, it is. Unrelenting, searing, pounding down on you, baking the interior of the car even with the a/c on full blast, cooking your brains in your head like an egg in its shell, sunshine. And going to the beach? Forget it. In the summer, it was like jumping into a warm salty tub with someone shining a 100 watt light bulb in your eyes. In the winter, it's crowded with tourists from 6am to sunset. And at any time, you have to worry about jellyfish, stingrays and/or red tide. Now, don't get me wrong, I enjoyed living in Florida. I was there for eight years, I met my DH there, my family lives there, and I have some wonderful friends there that I miss terribly (yes, that means you, too, Captain Mike!! ) and some memories that I'll always cherish. DH and I were married there, we had our honeymoon there, our children were born there, our first homes are there... Florida is a part of me now, and always will be. But, for me, there is no contest about where I belong. I need a place where the seasons change - I always have something to look forward to, and something to remember fondly. While I shovel the snow out of my driveway, I can laugh at DH and I complaining about the horrid heat and humidity last summer... while I watch the buds open on the trees this spring I can remember how beautiful they looked last fall, all gold and red and orange, and know that I'll get to see it again, soon enough. We are building traditions in our family that we just couldn't experience to the same degree in Florida. In the spring, we take the kids to the park, and after a long winter, they finally get to run around in the back yard again. We took them to New Jersey and the boardwalk last summer, maybe we'll do that again - or maybe the tradition that will persevere is the long drives we took at dusk, to watch the fireflies lighting up the farms along the road. Or maybe it'll be camping - we took them camping for the first time last summer, which is something I've been wanting to do, but avoided in Florida because of the fire ants, mosquitoes and alligators. I know we'll be going to the orchards again in the fall, to have apple cider and hot chocolate and donuts to warm us up while we are picking out our pumpkins for Halloween. And now, to my children, winter will always mean snow, and sledding, and having the entire world turn white as you sleep. To me, the seasons are a reminder of life itself. To truly appreciate the warmth of the summer sun, you have to experience the frost and cold, the renewal of spring and the anticipation of autumn. No matter what happens, spring always follows winter, and life goes on. I never realized how much these things were a part of me until I no longer had them... and I realized that they are ingrained so deeply in me that I felt almost lost when they were gone. Now, my children will see cardinals in the winter, and robins will signal spring, and geese will remind them that winter is on its way. It just seems right to me, and so far, they seem to enjoy it. If, when they are grown, they find themselves longing for warmth and sunshine, it will be a concious decision they make, it will be where they feel complete and right. They can always come home and sled in my yard in the winter, though.