Fair Weather

Some people are fair-weather friends; I am a fair-weather outdoorsman.  That is, I don’t go outdoors unless there is fair weather.  As soon as the temperatures dip down into shiver-inducing realms, I find myself reluctant to step outside unless I’m strictly dashing from a car into a building.  Maybe that’s because I was born a California girl, maybe it’s just because I’m a wimp. 

But I can’t say the same about my girls.  Yesterday, we had returned home from the store on a wet and chilly day and I was unloading the groceries as quickly as I could so I could retreat to the warmth of our house.  However, my plans were derailed when the girls re-discovered their toy ATVs that I had stashed in a corner of the garage (figuring our outdoor playing days were over for the season) and decided it was the perfect weather for driving around the yard.  I was about to scold them for their insensitivity to the obviously inclement conditions, when I realized they weren’t shivering.  They were having a ball.  So I stood there, laughing, and watched them play.  They were zooming around the driveway like they had just been released from a month-long jail sentence.  I guess that’s what winter in New England sometimes feels like to me – an imprisonment.  But I’m thinking that perhaps the imprisonment is much of my own making, by my hesitation to throw on an extra layer of clothing and just get outside for some fresh air.  

And maybe, just maybe, thanks to the initiative of my children (and some good old-fashioned cabin fever), you’ll catch me actually enjoying some less-than-fair weather this season.