Nine Degrees

A former Angeleno freaks out during an east coast winter

Yesterday morning I stepped onto my deck to check if the cat’s food bowl needed re-filling, and my first thought was: “uh-oh, why is Kesha foaming at the mouth?”

Upon closer inspection, I realized that the mysterious white frothy bits stuck to the bowl, and in the crevices of the deck, had not come from my feline’s innards, but from the sky.

Snow had arrived in Asheville.

I shivered inside my black parka and quickly stepped back into my condo. Later in the day, I went outside to change Kesha’s litter box — a jumbo-sized, gray plastic igloo — only to find that the wind had blown off the lid and sent the entire contraption clear across the deck, on its side, spilling the contents everywhere. If I could insert a bilious green emoji here, I would.

I had three bags of trash that needed to be taken out, but after the litter fiasco, and at the thought of making the frosty trek across the parking lot to the dumpsters, I decided against it. Today, it is currently 12 degrees, up from 9 degrees when I awoke, so the trash will be staying exactly where it is.

The wind almost blew me off my deck while I took this video

I texted Mary Jo and asked her if it was this cold last winter, thinking maybe it had been but in my unbridled enthusiasm for beginning my new Blue Ridge Mountain life I’d plumb forgotten. She informed me that, no, it was not. There was a brief cold snap last December before I arrived, but after that it was unusually mild, which was why I was always out walking through what felt like an Appalachian Shangri-la.

Growing up in New Jersey, I could never get warm enough. I wore turtlenecks and sat in front of a space heater till May. Part of the reason I moved to Los Angeles was to escape the cold, and for 36 years, I reveled in the sun’s steady embrace. When you can slip into a tank top and flip-flops in February, I used to ask myself, what fool would ever choose to live in a place where winter behaves like winter?

Never did I imagine that I would become that fool. Just to torture myself, I checked the weather in Los Angeles today, and it’s slated for a high of 62 degrees. While I would love to be soaking up the rays on a Southern California lawn chair right about now, fair weather alone isn’t a reason to go back to an environment where I couldn’t flourish, even with the dear friends I had made there.

Last night The Boyfriend came over to finish weather-stripping my doors. We ate steaming bowls of homemade dal while orange flames flickered and popped in the fireplace. As each spicy morsel slid down my throat, I reflected on the roof over my head, Whole Foods down the street, grown children that I never had to raise in the Gaza Strip. I continued to count my blessings with each spoonful. I thought of the day when new leaves will burst forth from the now gnarled brown tree branches, greening up the mountainsides.

And for the first time that day, I felt warm.