On Life After Florida

You know, I’m entering into my third year of life back in the great, well sometimes not-so-great, northeast and I am coming to accept the fact that God really does have great and omnipotent power. But does he have to show it off all winter? Why on earth, or in heaven, or wherever he (and I say he because if God was a woman she’d know that no sun means we all attain a ghostly winter pallor akin to the color of congealed oatmeal) chooses to reside (probably South Beach this time of year) does he feel the need to turn off the sun for four months every year? Really, I don’t mind the cold. The nipple numbing, lip chapping, fingertips and toes have frostbite cold. I’ve found that tears really can freeze…in your eyes! What I do mind, and what I miss the most about life in the tropics is the SUN!! I’m not sure how he does it or where the sun spends its winters, but I really do miss seeing her shining face every day. I wake every morning, pull back my heavy red velvet winter drapes that keep out the drafts in my 120 year old un-insulated house(yes, we do have two sets of drapes up here- summer and winter) and peek outside for the slightest glimpse of my sister Sun. Seeing her means I get to pull open all the drapes to let her shine in and add her warmth (gotta love that passive solar) and bright light into my Seasonally Affected Disorder home. Yes Virginia, there really is a condition known as “Seasonal Affective Disorder” of which all the sensitive, and sun starved, girls up here are afflicted. In early December, when we still have some sun a good portion of days, we all begin to feel it coming. A little restlessness creeps in with crankiness following shortly behind. Our husbands and significant others, who don’t seem to be so afflicted, are clueless about our mood changes and blame it all on pre-menopause, menopause or post-menopause depending on how far each of us is beyond the great age of fifty. Trying to explain the real reasons for our unsettled emotions would require them to actually have emotions, so we don’t bother trying not really wanting them to emerge from their testosterone fueled emotional abyss. So we all call each other to complain about the dreary days and find ways to pick up each other’s spirits. We remind each other that “this too shall end” - usually sometime around the end of March. We spend days searching all the off-price designer shops seeking the perfect orange or red cashmere sweater to pick up our spirits and, just possibly, stave off those numb nipples. We buy wonderfully colorful, ridiculous hats that we enjoy wearing to make each other laugh and our husbands cringe. “Are you really going to wear a fuchsia bomber hat to the theatre, dear”? (Okay, I'm the hat maven) Most of all we stay in touch. Closely in touch. As in really early morning phone calls while one is commuting to her job in the burbs and the other is busy crocheting an afghan for a third who has been complaining also about her drafty, cold house. (I confess, I’m the crocheter and not a very accomplished one at that-this afghan may never get finished!) We meet for early movies after work and dinners of sushi and sake. If we’re really feeling down we head to our favorite BYOB where the chef fixes us a massive plate of pasta which we wash down with a bottle of Montepulciano. We wander home (yes, all of this is done sans motor vehicles, us city chicks being the epitome of fuel conservation) wrap ourselves up in layers of fleece and hunker down with a good book for yet another wonderful winter in the city, of which we all bitch, but wouldn’t trade for anything.