Saturday, December 18, 2010

Driving out to meet up with a friend yesterday, I hit bad weather…well…bad for California. As rain poured down while fog and tire mist diminished visibility, I thought how diverse different areas are. The rain fell harder, and a flurry of raindrops and tire mist conjured up image of snow flurries in my mind. Next can thinking of snowmen.

Having been born and raised in southern California, I am the first to admit that I’m terrible at building snowmen. So when I connected with my friend, who grew up in Chicago, he got a big kick out of my sharing a story with him.

I told him about a couple of Christmases back when my husband and I rented a house in Yosemite for a weeklong, holiday, family get away. Then I went on to share how over that week, try as we might, our kids and we just couldn’t make a descent snowman if our lives had depended on it. Instead of a nice kid-sized snowman, all we managed to chisel out of the glacier ice was a pathetic blob that more closely reassembled a foot tall melted sort-of snowman than anything envision when imagining a snowman.

My friend, an engineer, went right for the practical explanation—we must have been using older snow that had partially melted. He explained, in his oh, so logical engineering way, that one must have the ideal snow conditions to make a snowman. As I recalled how the six of us had struggled and slaved over creating our...”snowman,” I recalled the many programs I’ve seen over the years where even the smallest child in cold regions rushes out the door to build incredible snowmen, easily recognized as that which they are—snowmen. Then I told my friend how our creation had been the byproduct of a freshly fallen snow. He didn’t miss a beat in telling me that the snow must not have been the right consistency.

Who knew building a snowman was such an exact art?

Nodding my head, I couldn’t help but think about how kids who grow up in snow-covered areas are well-versed in the fine art of snowmen building, while we here in California are experts at going to the beach and staying cool in how weather that often reaches triple digits. As I listened to my friend recant stories of growing up in the snow, I thought about how each of us is a byproduct of where we grew up. Not only do we tend to adopt the indigenous dress code, mannerisms and inflections of speech, but also the basic essentials of having fun with whatever our environment provided us.